Healthy Lifestyle Slows Down Ageing Process

It is time is to get past the anti-ageing serums and start a healthy lifestyle. Research shows that maintaining a  healthy diet, exercising and getting adequate sleep slows down the ageing process.

Researchers from the University of California in San Francisco conducted the study on 239 post-menopausal, non-smoking women. They were observed for a year and their physical activity, dietary intake and sleep quality was analysed. The research team also examined the blood samples before and after the study.

The study results showed that women who had unhealthy lifestyles reported a significant decline in telomere length in their immune cells during stress. But, the results were opposite in women who followed a healthy lifestyle.

"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," lead author Eli Puterman, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at University of California in San Francisco, said in a press release.

"It's very important that we promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, care giving and job loss," Puterman added.

Puterman said stress can speed up immune cell aging in adults, even in the short period of one year. He said that people should stay active, eat and sleep well during stressful events.

Elizabeth Blackburn, co-author of the study said, "These new results are exciting yet observational at this point. They do provide the impetus to move forward with interventions to modify lifestyle in those experiencing a lot of stress, to test whether telomere attrition can truly be slowed."

The study findings are published in Molecular Psychiatry.