August 2024- Researchers at UC San Francisco have found a link between following a diet that is rich in vitamins and minerals, especially one without much-added sugar, and having a younger biological age at the cellular level.
They looked at how three different measures of healthy eating affected an “epigenetic clock” – a biochemical test that can approximate both health and lifespan – and found that the better people ate, the younger their cells looked. Even when people ate healthy diets, each gram of added sugar they consumed increased their epigenetic age.
“The diets we examined align with existing recommendations for preventing disease and promoting health, and they highlight the potency of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients in particular,” said Dorothy Chiu, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health and first author of the study, which appears July 29 in JAMA Network Open. “From a lifestyle medicine standpoint, it is empowering to see how heeding these recommendations may promote a younger cellular age relative to chronological age.”
The study is one of the first to show a link between added sugar and epigenetic aging, and the first to examine this link in a heterogenous group of women – both Black and white – in midlife. Most studies on the topic have involved older white participants.
The study helps deepen our understanding of why sugar is so detrimental to health, said study co-senior author Elissa Epel, PhD, a UCSF professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
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“We knew that high levels of added sugars are linked to worsened metabolic health and early disease, possibly more than any other dietary factor,” Epel said. “Now we know that accelerated epigenetic aging is underlying this relationship, and this is likely one of many ways that excessive sugar intake limits healthy longevity.”
Women in the study reported consuming an average of 61.5 grams of added sugar per day, though the range was large: from 2.7 to 316 grams of added sugar daily. A bar of milk chocolate has about 25 grams of added sugar, while a 12-ounce can of cola has about 39 grams. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends adults consume no more than 50 grams of added sugar per day.
