Regular physical activity is one of the most effective ways to protect long-term health. It supports cardiovascular health, metabolism, muscle strength, mobility and physical independence.
But could being active also influence how quickly we age biologically?
Recent research suggests that it might.
Biological age is different from chronological age
Your chronological age is simply the number of years you have lived.
Biological age attempts to describe how aging is progressing inside the body. Scientists can estimate aspects of biological aging using biomarkers that change over time.
One approach uses DNA methylation — small chemical modifications to DNA that help regulate gene activity. Patterns of these modifications change as we age.
Researchers have developed so-called epigenetic clocks that use these patterns to estimate different aspects of biological aging.
This gives scientists an opportunity to ask an interesting question: do people who are more physically active also show younger biological aging profiles?
What does the research show?
A 2026 systematic review examined 44 studies involving more than 145,000 people.
Overall, people with higher levels of physical activity tended to have lower DNA methylation age.
Researchers were able to combine comparable data from seven studies for a more detailed statistical analysis.
Higher physical activity was significantly associated with lower epigenetic age acceleration measured by two established methods: Horvath and GrimAge.
In simple terms, more active people tended to show a younger epigenetic aging profile on these measures.
The association was particularly clear for GrimAge, an epigenetic measure designed to capture biological signals associated with mortality and age-related health risks.
Does this mean exercise makes you biologically younger?
Not necessarily.
Most of the evidence available for the combined analysis was cross-sectional. Researchers essentially compared physical activity and biological aging measurements rather than following people through an intervention designed to determine whether increasing exercise changed their epigenetic age.
This distinction matters.
People who are more physically active may also differ in diet, body composition, smoking, metabolic health and many other factors that can influence biological aging.
So the study shows a meaningful association, but it cannot yet demonstrate that increasing physical activity directly makes a person’s epigenetic age younger.
The results were not identical for every biological age test
Another important finding was that physical activity was not significantly associated with every epigenetic clock examined.
Significant associations were found for Horvath and GrimAge, but not for Hannum or PhenoAge.
This does not mean that physical activity works for some people and not for others.
Instead, it illustrates an important feature of biological age testing: different clocks are built differently and capture different biological information.
There is no single measurement that represents every aspect of human biological aging.
Physical activity matters even without a biological age test
Whether exercise can directly slow epigenetic aging is still being investigated.
But the practical message is much stronger than that uncertainty might suggest.
We already know that regular physical activity reduces the risk of many diseases that shorten healthy life and helps preserve physical function as we grow older.
That alone makes movement one of the most important components of healthy aging.
The emerging evidence from epigenetic clocks adds another intriguing layer: some of the benefits associated with an active lifestyle may also be reflected in molecular markers of aging.
Based on Research
Shan J, Tay JH, Wang W, et al. Physical activity and biological age measured by DNA methylation clocks: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Healthy Longevity. 2026.
