It’s long been suspected that a difficult life can make people look old before their time. New research shows that stress actually does age us prematurely—right down to our DNA. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, studied the DNA of 39 women who had spent years caring for their chronically ill children. They specifically examined the women’s telomeres, which are pieces of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes and play a critical role in cell division. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres shorten; they therefore can serve as a marker of a cell’s biological age. The women with chronically ill children, the study found, had shorter telomeres than a group of women with healthy kids. The more stressed the woman, the greater the wear on her DNA. The difference was so dramatic that the researchers estimated that the cells of the highly stressed moms had undergone the equivalent of 10 years of additional aging compared to the low-stress group. “Older” cells, in turn, can be vulnerable to a host of diseases. “If we feel stress, it needs to be taken seriously,” Elissa Epel tells New Scientist. “It may be embodied at the cellular level.” —The Week, Dec. 17, 2004
References:
1. www.lifepositive.com
2. www.my.webmd.com
3. www.arthritis.about.com
