Extreme heat is miserable and dangerous. It’s also making us age faster

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1. The soupy, smothering extreme heat that has scorched parts of the Northern Hemisphere this summer takes a hard toll on our bodies. It can make you feel nauseous, woozy and dehydrated. It can have pernicious health effects on multiple organs.

   But there’s another, less well-known, impact of extreme heat: It makes you age faster.

   [Prolonged exposure to soaring temperatures](https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/climate/heat-speed-up-biological-aging?utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit) can cause a deterioration in our cells and tissues and speed up biological aging, according to a new and growing body of research.

   Chronological age refers to how long a person has lived, but biological — or “epigenetic” — age measures how well our tissues and cells function. The difference between the two explains why sometimes someone’s age does not seem to match their health and vitality.

   An accelerated biological age is the “canary in the coal mine” for future risk of earlier onset of diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes, and early death, said Jennifer Ailshire, professor of gerontology and sociology at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

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