Chilling out slows it down
Yale University
Scientists in recent years have developed ways to measure biological age by tracking chemical changes in DNA that occur naturally as people age but occur at different times in different people. These so-called "epigenetic clocks" have proved to be better predictors of lifespan and health than chronological age.
In
a new study, Yale researchers used one such clock, appropriately named
"GrimAge," to ask two questions: How much does chronic stress
accelerate that biological clock? And are there ways to slow it down and extend
a healthy lifespan?
According
to their findings, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, stress
does indeed make life's clock tick faster -- but that individuals can help
manage the effects by strengthening their emotion regulation and self-control.
Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry at Yale, a professor of neuroscience and professor at the Yale Child Study Center, and one of the authors of the study, has spent decades studying stress and the myriad and pernicious ways that it erodes our mental and physical health.
Prolonged
stress, for instance, increases the risk of heart disease, addiction, mood
disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder, said Sinha, who is also director
of the Yale Interdisciplinary Stress Center. It can influence metabolism,
accelerating obesity-related disorders such as diabetes. Stress also saps our
ability to regulate emotions and to think clearly.
A
Yale team led by Sinha and Zachary Harvanek, a resident in the Yale Department
of Psychiatry, decided to explore whether stress also accelerates aging in a
relatively young and healthy population. Other co-authors included Ke Xu, an
associate professor of psychiatry, and Nia Fogelman, an associate research
scientist in psychiatry at Yale.
For
their study, they enrolled 444 people, ages 19 to 50, who provided blood
samples used to evaluate the age-related chemical changes captured by GrimAge
as well as other markers of health. The participants also answered questions
designed to reveal stress levels and psychological resilience.
Even
after accounting for demographic and behavioral factors such as smoking, body
mass index, race, and income, the researchers found that those who scored high
on measures related to chronic stress exhibited accelerated aging markers and
physiological changes such as increased insulin resistance.
However,
stress didn't affect everyone's health to the same degree. Subjects who scored
high on two psychological resilience measures -- emotion regulation and
self-control -- were more resilient to the effects of stress on aging and
insulin resistance, respectively. "These results support the popular
notion that stress makes us age faster," Harvanek said, "but they also
suggest a promising way to possibly minimize these adverse consequences of
stress through strengthening emotion regulation and self-control."
In
other words, the more psychologically resilient the subject, the higher the
likelihood they would live a longer and healthier life, he said.
"We
all like to feel like we have some agency over our fate," Sinha said.
"So it is a cool thing to reinforce in people's minds that we should make
an investment in our psychological health."
