A new study from UC San Francisco is the first to show that while the impact of life’s stressors accumulate over time and accelerate cellular aging, these negative effects may be reduced by maintaining a healthy diet, exercising, and sleeping well.
“The study participants who exercised, slept well, and ate well had less telomere shortening than the ones who didn’t maintain healthy lifestyles, even when they had similar levels of stress,” says lead author Eli Puterman, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at UCSF. “It’s very important that we promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, caregiving and job loss.”
The paper will be published in Molecular Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed science journal by Nature Publishing Group.
