It’s absolutely amazing that we live in a time when researchers are able to actually dig into a cell and see what causes its destruction. Understanding what causes our cells to degenerate and die is key to helping us live better and longer lives. That research hasn’t necessarily resulted in a magic anti-aging pill, but it has produced the next best thing.
A study at the University of California, San Francisco, shows that three simple habits can reduce the aging process on a cellular level. And they work because they promote longer telomeres.
Telomeres are structures in the cells’ nucleus that protect DNA from harmful modification. They are buffering caps sitting at the end of chromosomes that absorb changes that would otherwise distort your genetic material.
The longer your telomeres, the better they can protect the DNA. When telomeres shorten, their structure destabilizes, your cells grow older more quickly and you are increasingly vulnerable to disease.
So what can you do to keep your genetic material from displaying damage due to aging? Just follow these three habits:
- Enjoy a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
- Follow a regular exercise program.
- Get restful, nightly sleep.
That’s exactly what study participants did, and they “had less telomere shortening than the ones who didn’t maintain healthy lifestyles, even when they had similar levels of stress,” says researcher Eli Puterman. “It’s very important that we promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, caregiving and job loss.”
Other studies have shown that shrinking telomeres make you more likely to develop a host of diseases that can ruin your senior years. These include dementia, osteoporosis, stroke, vascular dementia, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and several different types of cancer.
“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,” says Puterman. “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.”
