We already knew that eating well, play sportsand live less stressed lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and helps to to live longer. A new study published in the scientific journal The Lancet Oncology provides a new reason to watch your lifestyle: it would also rejuvenate the cells.
For the moment the observations have been made on a panel of 35 men suffering from a non-aggressive form of prostate cancer and are still too thin to be generalized. But they are worth reporting.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco asked 10 of the patients to change their lifestyle. This upheaval meant committing to 30 minutes of exercise a day, following a relaxation technique such as yoga, meditation or breathing exercises. The handful of volunteers also had to modify their diet by eating more fruits, vegetables, grains and fewer carbohydrates. They also participated in a one-hour weekly support group.
Professor Omish’s team compared the length of the telomeres, that is to say the length of the ends of the chromosomes at the start of the experiment and then five years later.
A healthy lifestyle lengthens telomeres
Telomeres prevent the DNA present in our chromosomes from being damaged. But with old age these telomeres shorten, which is accompanied by an aging of the cells which die more quickly.
Previous studies have associated the narrowing of these telomeres with a decrease in life expectancy and an increased risk of age-related diseases such as heart disease, dementia, heart attack, diabetes and many cancers.
But this new study found that in the group that changed their lifestyle for 5 years, telomeres lengthened by an average of 10%. Another interesting observation to note, the more men have radically changed their lifestyle, the more their telomeres have lengthened.
Conversely, the group that did not change anything in their daily life suffered a shortening of telomeres by 3% on average.
Morality, to preserve its DNA longer, do not overdo it.
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