Traumatic events can cause a person's hair to turn gray overnight. Now a group of researchers has discovered that severe emotional distress - resulting, for example, from divorce, layoffs, or caring for a sick child or a sick parent - may accelerate the aging of the body's cells at the genetic level.
Traumatic events can cause a person's hair to turn gray overnight. Now a group of researchers has discovered that severe emotional distress - resulting, for example, from divorce, layoffs, or caring for a sick child or a sick parent - may accelerate the aging of the body's cells at the genetic level. The researchers' findings are the first to indicate such a direct link between psychological stress and biological age.
The researchers, who published their findings last week in the "Academy of Science Proceedings of National" journal, discovered that the blood cells of women who cared for a child with a disability for many years were genetically older by about ten years compared to the cells of women of the same age who were not under similar mental stress .
Although doctors have already linked chronic sprains to a weak immune system and a greater chance of catching colds and certain illnesses, they are still trying to understand how sprains damage tissues. The new study offers a new way of understanding this damage and raises the possibility that the process may be reversible.
The team of researchers, led by Dr. Alyssa Apple and Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn from the University of California, San Francisco, tested blood samples taken from 58 young and middle-aged mothers, 39 of whom were caring for a child with a severe chronic disability such as autism or cerebral palsy. The researchers examined the DNA of the white blood cells, which play a central role in the body's immune response to infections.
The research focused on a piece of DNA known as a telomere, which is found at the ends of chromosomes in each cell. The telomere shortens every time a cell divides and replicates itself (cells may replicate themselves many times during life to grow or fight disease). After each division, part of the telomere is restored by the chemical telomerase, but after about 10 to 50 divisions - the number varies according to the type of tissue and its condition - the telomere shortens to such an extent that the cell actually stops functioning and can no longer replicate itself. The change in the length of the telomere is considered a measure of a cell's age and vitality.
When the researchers compared the DNA of mothers caring for children with disabilities, they noticed a striking trend: the longer the mothers cared for their sick children, the shorter the telomeres in their cells and the lower their telomerase activity. According to the white blood cell test, some of the mothers who took care of a sick child for a long time were several years older than their chronological age.
"When people are under stress, they look tired, as if they are aging before our eyes. Now we have before us a finding that shows that something similar is indeed happening at the molecular level," said Dr. Blackburn.
