Top 3 countries that are aging the slowest — and which has fastest agers

Location, location, location!

A new study on aging across 40 countries confirms that your geographic location and your “exposome” — the physical, social and sociopolitical factors in your environment — significantly influence your chances of enjoying a long, healthy life.

“Our biological age reflects the world we live in,” said Argentinean neuroscientist Agustín Ibáñez, Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College Dublin and the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat).

“Exposure to toxic air, political instability and inequality, of course, affect society, but also shape our health.”

Ibáñez is part of an international team that used artificial intelligence and modeling to calculate the estimated biological ages of nearly 162,000 people around the world.

Chronological age is the number of years we’ve been alive.

Biological age is the age of our cells, tissues and organs — it may be higher or lower than our chronological age because it’s affected by genetics and lifestyle habits such as diet and exercise.

Having a biological age that’s higher than your chronological age puts you at risk for chronic conditions such as dementia, heart disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes.

The study authors analyzed the difference between the two ages for the participants, also known as their “bio-behavioral age gaps.”

The average chronological age was around 67, and about 55% of the participants were male.

The researchers discerned that lower income, poor air quality, socioeconomic and gender inequality, migration, lack of political representation, limited party freedom, voting restrictions, unfair elections and weak democracies contribute to accelerated aging.

“Whether a person ages in a healthy or accelerated way is shaped not only by individual choices or biology, but also by their physical, social and political environments — and these effects vary widely between countries,” said Sandra Baez, co-corresponding author of the study and Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at GBHI.

Baez’s team determined that people who live in Egypt and South Africa are aging the fastest among the countries evaluated in this study.

Egyptians’ predicted biological age is 4.85 years older, on average, than their chronological age, depending on the analysis performed.

South Africans appeared nearly four years biologically older than their chronological age, the researchers said.

Hungary and Latin American countries (Ecuador and Colombia) rounded out the bottom.

On the other side, northern European countries displayed younger and healthier aging clocks.

Denmark and Sweden were particular standouts, as well as Slovakia.

“Although direct country-to-country comparisons were not analyzed, Denmark’s advantage is evident: high structural equality, strong democratic institutions, high levels of education, clean air quality and lower cardiometabolic burden all contributed to delayed aging,” the researchers told The Post.

“In contrast, Egypt’s disadvantages (including structural socioeconomic inequalities, higher prevalence of cardiometabolic conditions like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease, along with weaker social and political exposomes) should explain its markedly accelerated aging.”

The findings were published recently in the journal Nature Medicine.

One study limitation is that only 40 countries were included in the analysis. There are over 190 countries in the world. The US, Japan and many others didn’t make the cut.