50 Times People Were Expecting Cute Babies But Ended Up Having Old People Instead

These photos bring up an interesting topic. The difference between someone's chronological and biological ages. When asked how old you are, you are likely to answer with the former, the number of years that have passed since you were born.

But if a doctor says you have the physical conditioning of a 50-year-old, they are referring to your biological age. General practitioner, medical researcher, and founder of PrimeHealth Clinical Research, Iris Gorfinkel, M.D., said the difference between the two can vary greatly from person to person.

"It's incredible how what we do determines actually how old we are, "Gorfinkel told Bored Panda. According to her, probably the biggest determinants in our biological age equation are diet and exercise.

"Mediterranean diet has been shown to make people live the longest. Why that is? We don't know exactly. But it has to do with a lot of vegetables, fruits, minimizing the intake of meat, but having some fresh meats, olive oil, nuts, seeds, and grains.

"Exercise holds hands with reducing death from all causes. That's pretty awesome if you think about it. Just a half-hour walk a day can make a big difference. If you do it five days a week, you're pretty much there. Even 20 minutes a day would be enough. The problem is the average North American walks 1.4 miles in a week, it's actually pretty terrible."

Gorfinkel said that we need to push that number up at least a bit. When we exercise, things get better. There's just no way around it. And this brings us to our next topic—sleep. "Exercise improves sleep, which in turn, again, improves our immune function, our memory. Sleep has controls how much we eat and how hungry we are," the doctor said.

All these aspects are connected. Next up, it's important to consider our basic habits, like consuming alcohol and smoking. "The World Health Organization has actually labeled alcohol the number three carcinogen in the world. People do not realize that anywhere it touches is basically associated with potential for cancer." Even colorectal and breast cancer risk goes up with alcohol.

Pretty much the same applies to cigarettes too. "[Smoking is] a big problem to the mouth, tongue, lips, esophagus, and [all the other places it touches]," Gorfinkel said. Some people tend to think that smoking is only bad for their lungs but that is simply not the case. The doctor added she can tell if someone is a smoker or not just by looking at their face!

"The telltale signs of a smoker include hair loss as well as lines around the lips and eyes, and the face, the arm even the breasts can sag in response to smoking."

Not to mention that smoking is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, bone loss and osteoporosis, infertility, low birth weight, and natural pregnancy losses.