There’s a lot of information about how changing your diet, exercise and stress levels can improve your health. These things are all intuitive to some extent and have good research to back them up, but when it comes to having evidence, the changes are often so gradual that we don’t notice them and don’t stick with our lifestyle changes for more than a few months.
A new study from researchers at the University of California San Francisco Preventive Medicine Research Institute found that our genes are not our destiny and that lifestyle changes can change how our bodies age. The study, published on September 16 in The Lancet Oncology, looked at the length of telomeres – the caps on the end of our chromosomes. Research has shown that they affect how quickly our cells age, and shorter telomeres often cause the cells to age and die more quickly. Shorter telomeres are related to stroke, cancer, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
In the small-scale study, 35 men with slow-growing, low-risk prostate cancer were followed for five years. Ten of them were asked to make lifestyle changes that included moderate exercise, a plant-based diet and stress-reduction activities. The other 25 did not make major lifestyle changes. Researchers found that those who had made the lifestyle changes had about a 10 percent increase in telomere length, while the other 25 men had about a 3 percent decrease. These findings are extremely significant because telomeres typically shorten as we age, rather than grow.
The researchers suggest that longer telomeres can reduce the risk of chronic conditions and increase lifespan, and that these findings apply to most people.
“So often people think ‘Oh, I have bad genes, there’s nothing I can do about it,” said Dean Ornish, the founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, “But these findings indicate that telomeres may lengthen to the degree that people change how they live. Research indicates that longer telomeres are associated with fewer illnesses and longer life.”
Implications
This study comes on the heels of a report just published in the American Journal of Public Health by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School that used national date to show that Americans today are living longer than people even two decades ago, and that our lives are generally healthier, with much thanks going to modern medicine.
Still, the telomerase study is encouraging because it reveals that our bodies down to the cellular level experience positive, life-improving results when we make lifestyle changes.
