How to pull a field from the user profile

is it possible or do I have to use Content Profile module that build user profiles as normal nodes.

for example I'm trying to calculate and display the age of an user with this code:

$year_diff = date("Y") - ($account->profile_birthdate['year']);
$month_diff = date("m") - ($account->profile_dob['month']);
$day_diff = date("d") - ($account->profile_dob['day']);
if ($month_diff < 0)
  $year_diff--;
elseif ($month_diff == 0 && $day_diff < 0)
  $year_diff--;


$node_field[0]['value'] = $year_diff ;

but I always get the value "2009", so I think this is wrong: ($account->profile_birthdate['year'])

the date in the database is stored in this format: a:3:{s:5:"month";s:2:"12";s:3:"day";s:2:"28";s:4:"year";s:4:"1985";}

I found the code from this article: http://drupal.org/node/45763

Can somebody help me ?

I solved the issue with this code:

global $user;
profile_load_profile($user);

$year_diff = date("Y") -  ( $user->profile_dob['year']);
$month_diff = date("m") - ($user->profile_dob['month']);
$day_diff = date("d") - ($user->profile_dob['day']);
if ($month_diff < 0)
  $year_diff--;
elseif ($month_diff == 0 && $day_diff < 0)
  $year_diff--;


$node_field[0]['value'] = $year_diff ;