Every face tells a story, and that story apparently includes
hints of how quickly a person is aging, a new study
contends.
Facial features have proven even more reliable than blood
tests in spotting those for whom time is taking a heavier
toll, a Chinese research team reports in the March 31 issue
of the journal Cell Research.
A computerized 3-D facial imaging process uncovered a number
of "tells" that show if a person is aging more rapidly,
including a widening mouth, bulging nose, sagging upper lip,
shrinking gums and drooping eye corners, the researchers
said.
"This suggests not only that youth is 'skin deep,' but also
that health is 'written' on the face," the study authors
concluded, suggesting that facial scanning could more
accurately assess a person's general health than a routine
physical exam.
This sort of facial imaging is part of a cutting-edge
technology aimed at estimating life expectancy and assessing
health risk factors simply by taking a scan of your face,
said Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of
Illinois at Chicago's School of Public Health and a board
member of the American Federation for Aging Research.
"A lot of your risk factor for disease shows up in your
face," Olshansky said. "You can identify the precise places
on the face where these risk factors show up."
In fact, Olshansky predicts that insurance companies
eventually could turn to such technology to improve
underwriting of life insurance, predicting a person's future
health with a simple face scan rather than a complex panel
of blood tests.
"All of that blood chemistry, all of the money spent on it,
is mostly a waste of money and time," he said. "You can get
at these risks a much simpler way through a combination of
facial analytics and asking the right questions."
In the new study, researchers at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences collected 3-D facial images of 332 people of
Chinese descent between the ages of 17 and 77.
Based on this data, the researchers constructed a model for
predicting age, generating a map of the aging human face
that recognized certain patterns of aging based on specific
facial features.
They found that up to age 40, people of the same
chronological age could differ by up to six years in facial
age. Those older than 40 showed even wider variation in
facial age.
"In aging science, we know people who look young for their
age are aging more slowly," Olshansky said. "They look
younger because they probably are younger. One year of clock
time is matched by something less than one year of
biological time. It's real. We can see it."
The researchers compared the results of their facial scans
to routine blood tests they took from the participants, and
found that age estimates based on facial features were more
accurate than blood screenings for cholesterol, uric acid or
the blood protein albumin.
The findings track with what doctors already know about how
age can affect a person's face, said Dr. Anne Taylor,
chairwoman of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons'
Public Education Committee.
"Our lips are shrinking, and the distance between the nose
and the mouth increases as we age," Taylor said. "And
there's a reason for the saying, 'Long in the tooth.' Your
gums are shrinking as you age, so more of your teeth are
showing."
Olshansky added that facial features also reveal evidence of
behaviors that can affect your health.
Smokers tend to develop wrinkles around the mouth, caused by
constant pursing of the lips to suck on a cigarette, he
said. Drinkers develop a "W.C. Fields" nose, red and bulbous
at the tip.
Researchers currently are exploring the ways in which
diabetes, obesity, drug use and other detrimental personal
behaviors affect the aging of the face, Olshansky noted.
Even though the Chinese findings jibe with what is known
about facial aging, they need to be verified through
follow-up research, said Dr. Stephen Park, president of the
American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery.
Park argued that the new study could not show whether some
people are physically aging faster than their years, because
the researchers did not include a control group for
comparison.
"It's not fair to say some are physiologically aging faster
or more slowly than their chronological age suggests,
because they use the data from these participants to define
what the age group should look like," he said.
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