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Posted on Jun 15, 2005, 8 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
It isn't news that eating fatty foods and smoking can shorten your life expectancy through heart attacks and cancer. But now a study shows that a lifetime of these unhealthy habits can directly 'age' DNA by years.
It isn't news that eating fatty foods and smoking can shorten your life expectancy through heart attacks and cancer. But now a study shows that a lifetime of these unhealthy habits can directly 'age' DNA by years.
Strings of DNA are often capped by highly repetitive sequences known as telomeres. Like the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces, telomeres help to protect genes against wear and tear. But each time a cell divides, the proteins involved in replicating our DNA fail to copy the telomeres completely. So these sections get shorter as the years pass.
Tim Spector, director of the twin research unit at St Thomas' Hospital in London, and his team have shown that telomeres shrink dramatically in patients who are obese or heavy smokers. "Shorter telomeres mean you will run out of steam sooner than people with longer ones," adds Edward Louis of the University of Nottingham, UK.
Obese women in the study were, according to their telomeres, nine years 'older' than slim women of the same age, explains Spector. Heavy smokers, who consumed a pack a day for 40 years, showed seven years of extra biological ageing.
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Strings of DNA are often capped by highly repetitive sequences known as telomeres. Like the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces, telomeres help to protect genes against wear and tear. But each time a cell divides, the proteins involved in replicating our DNA fail to copy the telomeres completely. So these sections get shorter as the years pass.
Tim Spector, director of the twin research unit at St Thomas' Hospital in London, and his team have shown that telomeres shrink dramatically in patients who are obese or heavy smokers. "Shorter telomeres mean you will run out of steam sooner than people with longer ones," adds Edward Louis of the University of Nottingham, UK.
Obese women in the study were, according to their telomeres, nine years 'older' than slim women of the same age, explains Spector. Heavy smokers, who consumed a pack a day for 40 years, showed seven years of extra biological ageing.
Read Full Story
