Epigenetic drift creates pre-disease states by eroding cellular robustness—not by causing immediate dysfunction

Epigenetic clocks predict disease risk years before symptoms appear. But how? The mechanism is not just methylation changes—it's loss of regulatory precision that creates vulnerability to stress.

The hypothesis: epigenetic drift creates pre-disease states by eroding cell-type-specific gene expression patterns. Cells remain functional under baseline conditions but fail when challenged. The disease manifests not when the epigenetic changes occur, but when a stressor exceeds the system's degraded capacity.