It always seems like there’s some new anti-aging gimmick on the market.
Instead of looking into every over-promising product, let’s look at the science. There are things that age us faster than we would otherwise, and you may be surprised to learn what makes that list.
So, let’s get into it.
Pregnancy
Creating life takes a toll on the body.
For a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers analyzed blood samples taken from more than 1,700 young men and women (ages 20 to 22) in the Philippines who were followed for about a decade thereafter. The participants also responded to surveys about their mental and physical health, behavior and sociodemographic background.
Researchers found that each pregnancy a woman endures can directly affect her biological age — which is a measure of age based on the condition of the cells in your body rather than on the length of time you’ve been alive.
Telomeres were among the measures used to determine biological aging. Women who became pregnant had shorter telomere lengths — a sign of aging.
Telomeres reside at the end of chromosomes, and every time a chromosome divides to regenerate tissue, the telomeres become more frayed and shorter in length, which is why this can be a helpful marker in assessing biological aging.
Traffic-related air pollution
Traffic frustrates you, and the pollution that comes with it can age you.
Researchers from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences previously identified areas in the brain that are “particularly vulnerable to the ageing process” (as well as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease).
In a more recent study, researchers analyzed the brain scans of about 40,000 participants over the age of 45 to investigate various risk factors that influence these more fragile brain regions.
They found that out of 15 categories of modifiable risk factors, traffic-related air pollution was one of the most harmful, next to alcohol and diabetes.
Sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is a disorder that interrupts breathing during sleep, and it does more than just disrupt your restful night.
When breathing is obstructed, blood oxygen levels drop because there isn’t enough air supply in the lungs — and this isn’t good news for your biological age either.
A study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Sleep Research Society, looked specifically at obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). OSA is defined as partial or complete closure of the upper airway that leads to pauses in breathing that last more than ten seconds and, in some cases, several minutes multiple times at night. This is followed by awakening and deep breathing.
The research team assessed 46 male patients ages 50 to 60 with OSA to understand how it affects aging. They found that, like pregnancy, these interruptions in breathing lead to shortening telomeres.
The good news is that the research team also concluded that treatment with a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine can lessen telomere shortening.
Loneliness
A study published in the journal Aging used blood test data from more than 11,900 samples obtained from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study to determine how different psychological factors affect biological aging.
Researchers found that feeling unhappy or lonely can add up to 1.65 years to one’s biological age — which “is significant and is comparable to the effect of smoking,” they wrote.
Inactivity
Keeping yourself moving has a slew of health benefits — even ones you might not visibly notice.
A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology involved nearly 1,500 women ages 64 to 95. Researchers presented questionnaires and tracked participants’ movements during wake and sleeping hours for seven days.
They found that too much time spent sedentary is associated with shortening telomeres.
Women who got less than 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day and who remained sedentary at least 10 hours per day had shorter telomeres. Their cells were biologically older by eight years compared with more active women.
But even those who did sit more still avoided shorter telomere lengths if they exercised for at least 30 minutes a day.
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