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Study: smoking, obesity accelerate ageing Smoking and obesity speed up people's biological ageing processes, researchers found.
They showed that people who smoke cigarettes or are obese have shorter telomeres, sections of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells, which makes them biologically older than the non-smoking, leaner people. Professor Spector and colleagues in the US reported their findings in a research letter published online by the Lancet. Every time a cell divides, and as people age, their telomeres get shorter. The loss is associated with ageing which is why telomeres are thought to hold the secrets of youth and the ageing process. The investigators measured concentrations of a body fat regulator, leptin, and telomere length in blood samples from 1,122 women between 18 and 76. Telomere length decreased steadily with age, and telomeres of obese women and smokers were much shorter than those of lean women and those who had never smoked. There was a difference between being obese and lean which corresponded to 8.8 years of ageing. Being a current or ex-smoker equated to about 4.6 years and smoking a pack a day for 40 years corresponded to 7.4 years of ageing. "Our results emphasize the potential wide-ranging effects of the two most important preventable exposures in developed countries -- cigarettes and obesity," Dr. Spector and colleagues wrote.
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