The stress of bereavement may accelerate the aging process, according to researchers who found evidence that losing a loved one early in life had an impact long before people reach middle age.
Scientists spotted biological markers of faster aging in people who had lost a parent, partner, sibling or child, but the signs were absent in others who had not experienced the death of someone close to them.
The finding suggests bereavement and grief take their toll on the body’s tissues and potentially increase the risk of future health problems. But it also raises the prospect that counseling and effective social support could help in the aftermath of a death.
Photo: AFP
Allison Aiello, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, said losing someone close was a “significant stressor” and a life experience consistently linked to poorer mental health, cognitive impairment, heart and metabolic problems and an earlier death.
“Our research reveals a significant association between experiencing losses from childhood through adulthood and biological signs of aging,” Aiello said.
The decline in tissue and organ function brought on by accelerated aging might explain in part why bereavement can have such an impact on health.
The researchers drew on data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which followed participants from their teenage years into adulthood. In particular, they looked at people who were bereaved before the age of 18, and from 19 to 43 years old.
Biological aging was assessed by analyzing people’s DNA for chemical changes that build up over the years. These epigenetic clocks can reveal whether a person’s biological age is older or younger than their chronological age, which has a bearing on disease risk in later life, Aiello said.
Among 3,963 people studied, nearly 40 percent had lost a loved one by adulthood. Those who experienced more bereavements had significantly older biological ages than those who had not lost people close to them.
Given the results, published in Jama Network Open, Aiello said research should now focus on whether helping the bereaved with counseling and coping strategies reduces the aging effect.
“These insights could inform clinical and public health approaches to improving health outcomes following a loss,” she said.
The study appears alongside separate work on the impacts of a healthy diet and added sugar on biological age. According to the research, women in the US who followed a vitamin and mineral-rich diet had a younger biological age than those on poorer diets. But even for the women who ate healthily, each gram of added sugar was linked to a rise in biological age.
“It’s the first demonstration of the effect of added sugars on our epigenetic aging,” said Elissa Epel, an author on the paper and professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
The researchers analyzed food records from 342 Black and white women from northern California and compared them with healthy eating habits, such as the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds.
Women who ate more healthily had a lower biological age, according to their epigenetic clocks, but the scientists saw faster biological aging in those who consumed foods with added sugar. The women in the study ate between 2.7g and 316g of added sugar a day.
“It appears … that both having a diet high in nutrients and low in added sugars matters,” said Barbara Laraia, a senior author on the study and professor of community health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dorothy Chiu, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Francisco, and first author on the paper, said she would expect similar effects in men.
Under UK guidelines, free sugars — those added to food and drinks, and found naturally in products such as honey and smoothies — should not make up more than 5 percent of daily calories, with adults having no more than 30g, equivalent to seven sugar cubes daily.
Nov. 11 to Nov. 17 People may call Taipei a “living hell for pedestrians,” but back in the 1960s and 1970s, citizens were even discouraged from crossing major roads on foot. And there weren’t crosswalks or pedestrian signals at busy intersections. A 1978 editorial in the China Times (中國時報) reflected the government’s car-centric attitude: “Pedestrians too often risk their lives to compete with vehicles over road use instead of using an overpass. If they get hit by a car, who can they blame?” Taipei’s car traffic was growing exponentially during the 1960s, and along with it the frequency of accidents. The policy
Hourglass-shaped sex toys casually glide along a conveyor belt through an airy new store in Tokyo, the latest attempt by Japanese manufacturer Tenga to sell adult products without the shame that is often attached. At first glance it’s not even obvious that the sleek, colorful products on display are Japan’s favorite sex toys for men, but the store has drawn a stream of couples and tourists since opening this year. “Its openness surprised me,” said customer Masafumi Kawasaki, 45, “and made me a bit embarrassed that I’d had a ‘naughty’ image” of the company. I might have thought this was some kind
What first caught my eye when I entered the 921 Earthquake Museum was a yellow band running at an angle across the floor toward a pile of exposed soil. This marks the line where, in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1999, a massive magnitude 7.3 earthquake raised the earth over two meters along one side of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層). The museum’s first gallery, named after this fault, takes visitors on a journey along its length, from the spot right in front of them, where the uplift is visible in the exposed soil, all the way to the farthest
The room glows vibrant pink, the floor flooded with hundreds of tiny pink marbles. As I approach the two chairs and a plush baroque sofa of matching fuchsia, what at first appears to be a scene of domestic bliss reveals itself to be anything but as gnarled metal nails and sharp spikes protrude from the cushions. An eerie cutout of a woman recoils into the armrest. This mixed-media installation captures generations of female anguish in Yun Suknam’s native South Korea, reflecting her observations and lived experience of the subjugated and serviceable housewife. The marbles are the mother’s sweat and tears,