Repeated heat waves can advance in the age of smoking or drinking

Long -term exposure to severe thermal events find aging in the body and increases the weaknesses of Heath issues, where a long -term study finds 24,922 people in Taiwan.

The study published today in Nature climate change¹It indicates that moderate increases in the exposure to the cumulative thermal wave increases the person’s biological age – somewhat compared to regular smoking or alcohol consumption. The more bounded events are heated, the greater the number of their organs. This is the latest study to show that severe heat can have invisible effects on the human body and accelerate the biological clock.

Paul Begis, an environmental health scientist at the University of Macquari in Sydney, Australia, who has not participated in the research, says exposure to severe heat, especially over long periods of time, surrounds its members and can be fatal, but “the fact that the heat waves of our age are surprising.” “This study is an invitation to wake up that we are all vulnerable to the harmful effects of climate change on our health. It enhances calls for an urgent and deep decrease in greenhouse gas emissions,” he says.

Hurry up aging

Age is not just a result of time. Previous studies have linked a number of factors-including environmental and social stress, genetics and medical interventions-to the signs of age-related physiological changes. This exposes people to the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and dementia².

To study the long -term effects of the heat waves on aging, the researchers analyzed data from medical examinations between 2008 and 2022. During that time, Taiwan witnessed about 30 thermal waves, which the study set as a period of high temperature over several days. Researchers used results from many medical tests, including liver, lung, kidney, blood pressure and infections, to calculate biological age. Then they compared the biological era with the total cumulative temperature that the participants may offer on the basis of their address in the two years before their medical visit.

The study found that the more extreme heat events that people have suffered, the more age-for every 1.3 degrees Celsius, the participant, is added, about 0.023-0.031 years, on average, to its biological watch.

“While the same number may seem small, over time and through population groups, this effect can have a meaningful general health effects,” says Cui Guo, an environmental epidemic at the University of Hong Kong, who led the study.

Handic workers and people living in rural areas have seen the largest health effects, perhaps because these groups are less likely to reach air conditioning. But there was an unexpected upward trend: the effect of heat waves on aging decreased during the 15 -year study period. Quh says that the reasons behind this thermal adaptation are unclear, but the improved access to cooling technology can play a role.

However, “the message is that the heat makes you progress a little faster than usually do, and that this is something you want to avoid,” says Alexandra Schneider, an environmental epidemic scientist at Helmholz Munich in Germany, who did not participate in the study.