Stress accelerates aging, but there are ways to reverse the process

After an illness, a pregnancy or three days of patron saint festivities, you may have the feeling of having suddenly aged.

Although biological age increases progressively over time, there is evidence that it does not always correspond to chronological age, and illness, smoking or exercise can influence how the years affect the body.

Today, a work that is published in the journal

It offers indications that stressful situations for the body, such as undergoing surgery, having covid or experiencing a pregnancy, accelerate the rate of aging.

The good news is that this extra damage is reversed, in many cases, in a matter of days or months when the cause that caused it disappears.

To study how aging fluctuates, an international team of scientists from some of the most prestigious institutions on the planet used what are known as DNA methylation clocks to measure changes in the biological age of humans and mice subjected to extreme stress. stressful.

These meters of biological aging observe how small molecules accumulate in the DNA and change the way in which genes are expressed, the basis of what is known as epigenetics.

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One of the experiments used a method that has been used to rejuvenate old mice known as heterochronous parabiosis.

This technical name refers to a surgical procedure in which two mice, one young and one old, are joined to share a circulatory system.

Many studies have found that this form of exposure to young blood rejuvenates the old mouse.

In the case of the work published today, rodents of three and twenty months were joined for two months.

The researchers observed that the intervention suddenly increased the biological age of the young mice, but that sudden aging was reversed after two months of recovery.

The authors made similar measurements in humans, with women after pregnancy, people who had suffered severe covid or had major surgery.

In all cases, rapid and significant increases in biological age were detected, but it was also observed that after a period of recovery they returned to the normal aging path.

In addition to the natural recovery process itself, in cases such as covid, it was found that an anti-inflammatory drug such as tocilizumab accelerated the recovery of normal biological age.

The authors suggest that this type of technique could be used to better assess the effectiveness of some drugs, particularly those aimed at slowing down aging.

The study also noted some differences that will require further study to understand.

For example, people who had elective surgery did not suddenly age as did those who had emergency surgery.

On the one hand, it is suggested that people who are preparing for surgery take preventive measures that slow down biological aging and, as Vadim Gladyshev, a professor at Harvard Medical School (USA) and one of the main authors of the work, points out, “psychological factors” derived from experiencing an unexpected traumatic situation cannot be ruled out.

After surgery, the patients recovered their initial biological age in less than a week.

Gladyshev says that these results make him think "that it is possible to partially reduce the biological age of some cells, tissues, and possibly whole organisms."

"Other studies show approaches capable of reducing the biological age during embryonic development, cell reprogramming and material exchange between old and young organisms," he adds, although he cautions that "this is a very new area of ​​research and all these approaches require validation".

In addition, the researcher believes that biological clocks can be useful for measuring physiological stress and the usefulness of some measures to alleviate it or the impact of some drugs on ageing.

Iñaki Martín-Subero, head of biomedical epigenetics at IDIBAPS in Barcelona, ​​believes that "this work opens the way, although it must be expanded and replicated in the coming years."

According to the Spanish researcher, who did not participate in the study, this type of technique can help intervene on biological age, particularly in people who have an accelerated aging rate.

“There are studies that show very significant associations between having a racing clock and premature death from anything from cardiovascular disease to cancer,” he points out.

"These clocks would allow us to measure the effect of interventions such as exercise, mindfulness or sleep hygiene, in some cases over a relatively short period, in slowing down the clock and prolonging life," he says.

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The authors acknowledge that DNA methylation clock technology is still in its development phase and that, as they observed in their study, not all are able to capture accelerated but reversible sudden aging.

Nor has it been possible to relate how the way in which a person ages and recovers from circumstantial stressful situations affects rapid or slow aging in the long term.

In the coming years, it is likely that technology will become a tool to know how to deal with an unavoidable process, although perhaps not so much, such as aging.

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