The benefit of better heart health may be associated with the positive impact of heart-healthy lifestyle factors on biological aging (the age of the body and its cells), according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association , an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association. Study: Epigenetic Age Mediates the Association of Life's Essential 8 With Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality . Image Credit: santoelia / Shutterstock “Our study findings tell us that no matter what your actual age is, better heart-healthy behaviors and managing heart disease risk factors were associated with a younger biological age and a lower risk of heart disease and stroke, death from heart disease and stroke and death from any cause,” said Jiantao Ma, Ph.
D., senior study author and an assistant professor in the division of nutrition epidemiology and data science at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. This study analyzed whether a chemical modification process known as DNA methylation, which regulates gene expression, may be one mechanism by which cardiovascular disease health factors affect cell aging and the risk of death.
DNA methylation levels are the most promising biomarker for estimating biological age. To some degree, your genetic makeup determines biological age, and lifestyle factors and stress can also influence it. Researchers examined health data for 5,682 adults (mean age of 5.
