Whatever your age, your body is many years younger. In fact, even if you are middle-aged, most of you may be ten years younger or less. This heartening truth, which arises from the fact that most body tissues are under constant renewal, has been underlined by a novel method of estimatin the age of human cells.

Its inventor, Jonas Frisen, believes the average age of cells in an adult body may be as young as 7 to 10 years.

Frisen, a stem cell biologist at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, has also discovered a fact that explains why people behave their birth age, not the physical age of their cells: a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this minority includes some or all of the cells of the cerebral cortex.

Source: The Times of India (Print Edition)