India, June 17 -- A new Stanford Medicine study has found that ageing is not constant; rather, it can speed up suddenly at certain points in life. So, if one day you ever feel like everything in your body is breaking down at once and you have aged overnight, that might not be your imagination.

The research found that many of our molecules and microorganisms dramatically rise or fall in number during our 40s and 60s. They assessed thousands of molecules and microbiome (the bacteria, viruses and fungi that live inside us and on our skin) in 108 people they had been following to better understand the biology of ageing. The people in the group were between the ages of 25 and 75.

The Stanford study found that we don't age in a gradual, chron...