New research suggests a number of healthy lifestyle choices could be effective weapons against stress-related cell aging.
The study is the first to show that the negative effects of stress on cells can be combated through a healthy diet, exercise regimen, and sleeping schedule. The findings were made by the University of California - San Francisco and the related paper will be published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry
"The study participants who exercised, slept well and ate well had less telomere shortening than the ones who didn't maintain healthy lifestyles, even when they had similar levels of stress," said lead author Eli Puterman, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at UCSF. "It's very important that we promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, caregiving and job loss."
Telomeres are "protective caps" found at the ends of chromosomes that affect how quickly cells age. As they become shorter their protection weakens, causing cells to age more quickly.
In the recent study researchers looked at how those three lifestyle factors affected cell aging and telomere length. They studied 239 post-menopausal, non-smoking women. The participants provided blood samples throughout the year-long research period, allowing the team to test telomere length. They also reported any stressful events that occurred over the course of the study. The team found women who did not participate in the healthy behavior experienced a greater loss of telomere lenght for each stressful event they experienced. This suggests healthy habits could protect cell aging related to life stressors.
"This is the first study that supports the idea, at least observationally, that stressful events can accelerate immune cell aging in adults, even in the short period of one year. Exciting, though, is that these results further suggest that keeping active, and eating and sleeping well during periods of high stress are particularly important to attenuate the accelerated aging of our immune cells," Puterman said.
