STRESS not only frays your nerves, it also erodes your DNA, which may add nearly 20 years to your “chromosomal age”.
Elissa Epel at the University of California at San Francisco and colleagues looked at chromosomes in the white blood cells of 58 women aged 20 to 50. They measured the length of DNA sequences called telomeres, which shorten with each cell division, so limiting the number of times a cell can divide. They also asked the women how stressed they felt.
The high-stress group’s telomeres were shorter on average than those with low stress, and corresponded to 9 to…
