British researchers have added yet another reason to drop the cigarettes and the Bear Claws and pick up a pair of running shoes. Obesity and smoking make people age faster on the cellular level.
The difference was in the length of telomeres, the protective caps at the end of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides (or ages), the length of telomeres shortens, leaving the cell a little more open to damage.
The telomeres of obese women and smokers were shorter than those of thinner, clean-lung women. In fact, the leaner the women, the longer the telomeres.
“Our results emphasize the pro-aging effects of obesity and cigarette smoking,” said researchers.
Researchers concluded that each “pack-year” (the number of cigarettes smoked per day times the number of years of smoking) had a significant impact on normal telomere shortening. Current or former smokers were on average 4.6 years older, on a cellular level, than they should be. A pack a day for 40 years translated to 7.4 years added.
Obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, had worse effects on average. Obese women aged an extra 8.8 years.
“Our results emphasize the potential wide-ranging effects of the two most important preventable exposures in developed countries — cigarettes and obesity,” researcher Tim Spector of St. Thomas’ Hospital, U.K., said in a prepared statement.
Researchers have not concluded that shorter telomeres have an effect on lifespan-only that it increases apparent age. And it was not determined if this was true in all cells, as only white blood cells were examined.
