Repeated heat waves can age you as much as smoking or drinking

Repeated heat waves can age you as much as smoking or drinking

By Freda Get & Nature Magazine

Long -term exposure to extreme heat events accelerates the body aging process and increases vulnerabilities to health problems, finds a long -term study of 24,922 people in Taiwan.

The study, published today in Climate change of naturesuggests that moderate increases in cumulative exposure on thermal waves increase the biological age of a person – to a measure comparable to smoking or the consumption of regular alcohol. The more extreme heating events to which people were exposed, the more their organs aged. This is the latest study to show that extreme heat can have invisible effects on the human body and accelerate the biological clock.

Exposure to extreme heat, especially over long periods, stretched the organs and can be fatal, but “the fact that the heat waves age is surprising,” explains Paul Beggs, a scientist of environmental health at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who was not involved in research. “This study is an alarm clock that we are all vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change on our health. It strengthens calls for an urgent and deep reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, ”he adds.

On the support of scientific journalism

If you appreciate this article, plan to support our award -winning journalism by subscription. By buying a subscription, you help to ensure the future of striking stories about discoveries and ideas that shape our world today.

Accelerate aging

Age is not only time 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 puts people at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and dementia.

To study the long -term impacts of heat waves on aging, the researchers analyzed the data of medical examinations between 2008 and 2022. Meanwhile, Taiwan experienced around 30 heat waves, which the study defined as a period of high temperature over several days. The researchers used the results of several medical tests, in particular evaluations of the function of the liver, lungs and kidneys, blood pressure and inflammation, to calculate organic age. They then compared the organic age with the total cumulative temperature to which the participants were probably exposed on the basis of their address during the two years preceding their medical examination.

The study revealed that the heat events more extreme than people have known, the more quickly they aged – for each additional participant of 1.3 ° C, a participant was exposed, approximately 0.023 to 0.031 years, on average, was added to their biological clock.

“Although the number itself may seem small, over time and between populations, this effect can have significant implications for public health,” explains Cui Guo, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, who led the study.

Manual workers and people living in rural areas have experienced the most important health impacts, probably because these groups are less likely to have access to air conditioning. But there was an unexpected advantage: the impact of heat waves on aging decreased during the 15 -year study period. The reasons for this thermal adaptation are not clear, but better access to cooling technology could play a role, says Guo.

However, “the message is that the heat makes you age a little faster than you would normally, and that it is something that you would like to avoid,” explains Alexandra Schneider, an environmental epidemiologist in Helmholtz Munich in Germany, who was not involved in the study.

Heating

In 2023, research in Germany revealed that higher air temperatures were associated with more epigenetic markers of aging. And a study in more than 3,600 elderly people in the United States concluded in the same way, by analyzing DNA markers, as participants in prematurely extreme heat.

The most recent study focused on the impact of long -term heat exposure, which is more likely to have life health effects. This is important because climate change leads to more extreme events. In the United States, there are now six waves of heat each year, in 2010 – against two in the 1960s. Scientists believe that climate change has made heat waves such as 2022 fatal in Pakistan and India, during which temperatures reach 50 ° C, 30 times more likely to occur.

The growing frequency of heat waves, combined with their health effects, underlines the importance of protecting vulnerable groups, explains Guo. “Heatwave is not a personal risk factor, but a global concern.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication August 26, 2025.

It’s time to defend science

If you enjoyed this article, I would like to ask for your support. American scientist has been a defender of science and industry for 180 years, and at the moment can be the most critical moment of this two -centuries story.

I was a American scientist The subscriber since the age of 12, and that helped shape my way of looking at the world. Let me know Educates me and always delights me, and inspires a feeling of fear for our vast and magnificent universe. I hope that does this for you too.

If you subscribe to American scientistYou help make sure that our cover is focused on significant research and discoveries; that we have the resources necessary to report the decisions that threaten laboratories in the United States; And that we support the budding scientists who work at a time when the value of science itself does not become often again.

In return, you get essential news, Captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, Maybe not miss newsletters, videos to watch, Difficult games and the best writings and reports in the scientific world. You can even Give someone a subscription.

There has never been more time for us to get up and show why science counts. I hope you will support us in this mission.