14 DAY TRIAL // A team of researchers writing in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology claim that when it comes to biological age, 30 has pretty much become the new 45.
Thus, these specialists maintain that, “courtesy” of their eating a poor diet, smoking, drinking and not getting nearly as much exercise as they should, today's 30-year-old adults feel roughly the same as their parents did when they were 15 years older.
The researchers reached these conclusions after monitoring the medical records of 6,000 individuals aged 20, 30, 40 and 50.
Thus, data was collected over a period of 25 years, and in the end, it was discovered that, when compared to past generations, today's 30-year-old men are 20% more likely to be overweight than previous generations were when at the same age.
Furthermore, it was discovered that women who now find themselves in their 20s are twice as likely to have significant weight issues than their mothers and grandmothers were in their youth.
Apart from having higher chances to gain significant amounts of weight, today's adults are more likely to suffer from medical conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes while still at a rather early age. Daily Mail quotes study author Gerben Hulsegge, who made the following observations:
“The more recently born adult generations are doing far worse than their predecessors. For example, the prevalence of obesity in our youngest generation of men and women at the mean age of 40 is similar to that of our oldest generation at the mean age of 55.”
“This means that this younger generation is ‘15 years ahead’ of the older generation and will be exposed to their obesity for a longer time,” Gerben Hulsegge summed up the findings of his and his colleagues’ investigation.
The researchers urge that, given the conclusions of this study, people should try to maintain a healthy body weight.
As they explain, this can be achieved by keeping a close eye on one's diet and exercising on a fairly regular basis.