Epigenetic clocks measure accumulated molecular changes that occur before clinical conditions like heart attack or hypertension.

“obviously the the methylation patterns these are molecular changes that happen before someone has a heart attack before someone has high blood pressure and these are accumulated you know changes in at the molecular level that are occurring and also when you think about heart disease it probably relates to many confounders such as psychosocial stress you go through a divorce you know you get fired and very substance abuse you know a lot of processes that are in certain ways stress factors but they are not part of what i would call innate aging processes you know um whereas these biomarkers such as an epigenetic clock is hopefully much closer”