At what age does youth end according to science?

How long have you been children, teenagers or adults? It’s not easy to say, but someone has tried.

The Stanford University Research Department in the United States published a study in 2019.

The study focuses on the biological changes that the body undergoes as it ages. Thus, the team of scientists determined the age at which youth ends and how proteins change with aging.

At what age does youth end? The three ages identified by science

Science identifies three aging turning points throughout our lives. Why? These are the three times when major changes in blood-borne proteins can be detected. The ages are:

• puberty: 34 years
• late maturity:60 years
• the elderly: 78 years

If we rely on data from a study,Association for Lifelong Learning and Social Participation of the ElderlyYouth ends at 34. At this age one must make way for adulthood.

Why does youth end at that moment?

So we wonder why 34 is the age at which youth ends. The team of researchers noticed that the levels of some proteins that had remained constant begin to undergo changes at those moments in life, specifically, when 34 yearsThese are changes that occur irregularly and affect aging.

In this regard, Tony Wyss-Coray, Professor of Neuroscience, says:

Proteins are the backbone of the cells that make up your body, and when their relative levels undergo significant changes, it means you have changed too. Monitoring thousands of them in your plasma gives you a glimpse into what’s going on throughout your body.

I study

The researchers used an innovative method to conclude their study on aging.

They used plasma from 4,263 people aged between 18 and 95, and were able to identify a physiological clock Based on 373 specific proteins it can predict a person’s chronological age.

But what are these proteins? One example is lipoproteins. According to the study’s lead author, they play a key role in people’s cardiovascular health.

In the future, this technology could be used for other purposes, such as identifying people who are aging faster. You could thus reduce your risk of suffering from Diseases Age and gender related.

Women’s age is different

Another interesting fact is that men and women do not age in the same way. Instead, they seem to have two completely different aging patterns. Of the 1,379 proteins that changed with age in the study, 895 were different between men and women. So, while the results are not yet conclusive, the study has shown that Men and women age differently..

The study, published in Nature, states:

This new approach to studying aging has led to the identification of unexpected signatures and pathways that could offer potential targets for age-related diseases.

Other studies: “Youth Stage”

But other intellectuals have also questioned this. Professor Alessandro Rosina, Associate Professor of Demography at the Faculty of Economics atCatholic University of Milantakes a different approach. Based on the fact that the average life expectancy is 79 years for men and 84 years for women, Rosina has moved the social hands of life stages forward.

According to Rosina, a person is a child until the age of 15 (while for example until the 60s and 70s a child was a child until the age of 11), and a young person from 16 to 24. Moreover, the condition of “youth” was born, an age group that did not exist before. This is because for previous generations, a person was considered an adult at the age of 25 and remained so until the age of 60, the age at which old age begins. Therefore, today, according to Rosina, we have become “young adults”. 25 to 34 years.

What is youth?

These studies raise the question: What does “youth” mean in social terms? The United Nations (UN) defines youth as those who have Between 15 and 24 years oldThis is what is written on the official portal of the global organization.

According to this statistically oriented definition, persons under the age of 14 are considered “children”. However, let us remember that social and scientific definitions are based on different premises and therefore give different results.

For example, researcher Rogelio Marcial Vázquez noted in 2019 that the Mexican Youth Institute (Injuve) defined youth as all people who have Between 17 and 21 years oldHowever, although social definitions have nothing to do with science (and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt), social definitions do change and it is interesting to note how this happens.