Change your lifestyle to your diet, SleepAnd exercise—combined with interventions such as relaxation exercises and additional—may reverse the aging process, according to recent research.
Six women between the ages of 46 and 65 underwent an eight-week program that included dietary changes, Sleepand exercise. They were also instructed to relax, Probiotics for Women and phytonutrient supplements, along with diet.
Blood tests showed a decrease biological age up to 11 years in five out of six women, with the average participant experiencing a decline of 4.6 years, according to the study, published last year in the magazine Aging.
Participants had an average chronological age of 58 at the start of the study, and all but one were biologically younger. For this reason, it is unlikely that the reduction in biological age that most participants experienced during the study was due to improved disease. Instead, the improvement “may be due to underlying age-related mechanisms,” the authors—from the universities of Washington, Virginia, and Illinois—wrote.
Biological age vs. chronological age
What is the difference between biological age and chronological age? Simply put, chronological age is how long you have lived, while biological age is the “age of your cells”, according to Northwestern Medicine.
Biological age is also called epigenetic age. The epigenome “consists of chemical compounds that alter or mark the genome in a way that tells it what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,” according to the US National Institutes of Health. Those changes—influenced by environmental factors such as emphasizediet, medications, and pollution—can be passed from cell to cell as they divide and from generation to generation.
They are also reversible, as this study demonstrates.
Lifestyle changes appear to reverse the aging process
During the study, participants were asked to consume the following foods daily:
- 2 cups dark green leafy vegetables
- 2 cups cruciferous vegetables
- 3 cups colorful vegetables
- ¼ cup pumpkin seeds
- ¼ cup sunflower seeds
- 1 to 2 beets
- Liver or liver supplement (three 3-ounce servings per week)
- 1 serving of eggs (5–10 per week)
They were also asked to eat two servings of methylation-adapting foods per day — foods that support DNA methylation, a process that controls gene expression. Example of a serving of those foods include:
- ½ cup berries, preferably wild
- 2 medium cloves garlic
- 2 cups green tea, steeped for 10 minutes
- 3 cups oolong tea, brew for 10 minutes
- ½ teaspoon rosemary
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
Participants were also asked to make the following changes in their daily lifestyle:
- Take 2 probiotics capsule
- Use 2 servings “green vegetable powder“
- Drink 8 glasses of water a day
- Exercise at least 30 minutes
- Practice the breathing exercise twice.
- Sleep at least 7 hours
- Fast 12 hours after last meal of the day
No woman completed all the tasks throughout the day, and that’s okay, the researchers wrote. Improvements in biological age were noted in women who adhered to the program an average of 82 percent of the time. They added that the relatively high level of adherence among patients may be largely due to the nutritional guidance provided.
The impact of stress on biological age
The seventh participant—a man—withdrew from the study due to a family emergency. Before joining the study, he had a chronological age of 71 and a biological age of 57.6. He was retested eight weeks later, despite withdrawing from the study, and his biological age had increased to 61.6 years. Previous studies have noted “a sudden acceleration in biological age following various stressful events,” although that aging process reverses once the stressor is resolved, the authors note.
However, for some people, stress is not temporary and shows a more lasting impact on the aging process. People with long-term mental health conditions such as depressionAnxiety and bipolar disorder are often biologically older than their actual age, according to recent research presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris.
More information on healthy aging:
