DOES STRESS SHORTEN LIFE AND SHORTEN TELOMERE LENGTH IN WOMEN CAN YOU LOWER STRESS AND SAVE CHROMOSOME TELOMERE

Telomere length has been linked to the length of life, a telomere is a region of repetitive DNA at the end of a chromosome, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration. The question is does stress shorten the telomere length? A recent Fox news story said that University of California San Francisco researchers "chose to study women caring for gravely ill children with chronic illnesses and disabilities. They found that women who were the most traumatized by their situation had significantly shorter telomeres. They reached that conclusion by comparing that group to women with decidedly more normal levels of stress".






Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel prize for for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase has compared telomeres to the tips on the ends of shoelaces that keep them from fraying.



Previous work has suggested a connection between stress and the length of the telomere.

"Over the years, some findings have supported this intuitively appealing idea (of Women who were more stressed had shorter telomeres and more oxidative stress.) One literature for example, demonstrates how repeated challenges to glucose homeostasis can exacerbate adult-onset diabetes and accelerate the nonenzymatic formation of advanced glycation end products . Other studies have shown that prolonged exposure to one class of stress hormones can accelerate an aspect of brain senescence , whereas prolonged suffering from a stress-related psychiatric disorder (i.e., major depression) increases the risk of heart disease. And some reports have linked stress, or the hormones of stress, to the generation of oxygen radicals . But, with the exception of those final studies, relatively little work has linked chronic stress with endpoints that transcend particular organ systems and, instead, concern the fundamental cell biology of aging. In the study reported by Epel et al.an interdisciplinary team presents exciting evidence for such a link".

Organismal stress and telomeric aging: An unexpected connection

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Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress