Jean-Marc Lemaitre, research director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Biotherapy at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, is an expert on longevity. He’s also someone who doesn’t like to talk about his age.
Although there are now 14 characteristics of aging, from inflammation to prematurely shortened telomeres – the little caps on your chromosomes, the main factor, he says, is your mindset.
It’s all about, he says, being a ‘nolder.’ He’s created a portmanteau that combines ‘never’ with ‘old’ for people like himself, who refuse to be defined by their birthday. And at 62 he says he still enjoys full health: ‘I can swim, I did diving on holiday, I can run,’ he says. ‘I can do everything.’
And there’s good evidence that feeling younger can actually make you younger.
According to a 2023 Heidelberg University study, feeling younger than your chronological age is linked to less cognitive decline and a reduced mortality when examined through the lens of 11 chronic illnesses.
And that attitude, which is widespread in France, has something to do with the fact that France, alone of the European countries, is beating out the other countries on life expectancy.
The average life expectancy in France is 83.3 years while the British can expect to live an average of 81.3 years and Americans, just 79 years. The number of centenarians in France doubles every decade – twice as fast as it does in Britain. In fact, France has its own ‘Blue Zone,’ in Martinique, a French island, referred to as the ‘centenarian paradise,’ where the oldest-living person, who died in 1997, was a whopping 122 years.
Although the health effects have something to do with French diet, the propensity to cook from scratch and the polyphenols in red wine, which boost our immune system, it’s more to do with xenobiotics, says Lemaitre. When the typical French meal of steak, frites and red wine releases foreign molecules into our body, the liver is activated to destroy them in a process called ‘xenobiotics.’
This kind of short-term, mild stress response is good for us and good for longevity, as is a short fast or occasionally plunging our body into a cold-water bath.
What’s not good for longevity is chronic stress –the ‘trapped rat’ feeling of being powerless in a situation that is never ending.
In one study, researchers discovered just how impactful chronic stress is on our biological age. They studied on a group of medical students – who work long hours, are sleep deprived and under constant stress – and discovered their telomeres—the caps on the end of our chromosomes that help determine our biological age — had shortened six-fold. Shorter telomeres set off a process where damaged cells release substances that harm healthy cells, driving inflammation and inhibiting the body’s ability to repair itself.
But the good news is that biological aging can be quickly reversed – and in as little as two months. In one study, a group of men, aged between 50 to 72, regained 3.23 years of biological age, according to epigenetic markers, by exercising, eating a good diet and de-stressing. The women fared even better, and reversed their biological age by 4.6 years in the same time period.
But the greatest factors in staying young or becoming young again have less to do with physical changes, like eating well and exercising regularly, and far more to do with your mindset, says Lemaitre.
Having a strong purpose, staying curious, being connected to and focusing on others are ultimately the greatest ways to turn back the clock, even trumping a sedentary life and a poor diet.
These factors have one big thing in common: how you deal with aging. In other words, As Lemaitre would put it, when everything is taken into account, aging is all in your head.
