Reading people’s faces can offer insights into their inner health, according to a new study. Researchers have found that facial temperature patterns can reveal a person’s biological age – how quickly their cells are aging – and even detect signs of chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure. The study, published in Cell Metabolism, suggests that certain “hot” and “cool” spots on the face may serve as indicators of underlying health conditions.
The research, which analyzed nearly 3,000 Han Chinese participants aged 21 to 88, revealed that individuals with metabolic disorders such as diabetes or fatty liver disease tend to have higher temperatures around their eyes compared to healthy peers. Similarly, those with high blood pressure showed elevated temperatures on their cheeks.
“We can use thermal facial images to diagnose these diseases with about 80 percent accuracy,” says Jing-Dong Jackie Han, a computational biologist at Peking University in Beijing. “The facial thermal pattern really provides significant insights into a person’s health.”
Han and her team also discovered that nose temperature tends to decrease more rapidly with age than other facial areas, suggesting that a warmer nose might indicate a younger biological age. Conversely, temperatures around the eyes tend to increase as people age.
“This approach to quantifying age through thermal facial images is innovative and offers an independent assessment of biological age,” says Vadim Gladyshev, an aging specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study. He believes that facial thermal age could become a valuable biomarker for aging and health assessments.
The idea that facial temperature reflects health isn’t entirely new. Han notes that traditional Chinese medicine has long considered facial heat as an indicator of health. Additionally, it’s well-known that fevers and infections raise body temperature, including that of the face. Previous studies have shown that core body temperature varies with age, metabolic state, and metabolic diseases, and facial heat maps have even been used to detect post-traumatic stress disorder. However, this study is among the first to investigate whether facial thermal patterns can assess biological age and metabolic diseases.
Blood samples from the study’s participants provided clues as to why these thermal maps are so informative. For example, increased temperatures around the eyes and cheeks were linked to heightened cellular activity associated with inflammation, such as DNA repair and immune responses.
However, it’s unclear whether this tool, dubbed ThermoFace, would yield the same results across different demographic groups. Moreover, factors beyond age and disease can influence facial temperatures. For instance, a two-week daily jumping routine reduced participants’ thermal facial age by five years, primarily by increasing the temperature of the nose. Surprisingly, even lifestyle choices like eating yogurt had an impact on thermal facial age.
Gladyshev cautions that while biological age is linked to disease risk, ThermoFace cannot establish cause and effect. However, it could serve as an early warning system, alerting clinicians to potential health issues that warrant further investigation.
“For practical purposes, this tool is very useful,” Gladyshev says. Whether it will be adopted for clinical use remains to be seen.
Source: Science News