Unfortunately, most of us frequently underestimate the effects that stress can have on our mental health. Let’s say you have butterflies in your stomach because you didn’t quite finish your homework, but you’re also confident that if the teacher asks you about it, you’ll cross that bridge when you reach it. You might also feel like you have your head in the clouds every morning when you wake up, but you still decide to be optimistic.
Perhaps you got the point already: stress can install itself in our lives slowly but surely. While pretty much anybody has a certain level of stress nowadays, because let’s face it, society is far from being all sugar, spice, and everything nice, such a condition can have some severe consequences for our lives. Apart from depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, or digestive problems, there’s even more that we need to worry about: the increase in our biological age.
Recover from stress to overcome the increase in your biological age
It is possible to overcome the increase of the biological age caused by stress by simply fighting back stress itself, according to a new study that NeuroscienceNews.com tells us about. In fact, that increase in our biological age can even be reversed, according to the research in question.
The scientists concluded that stress has the ability to cause short-term fluctuations in the biological age of humans by using DNA methylation clocks.
James White from the Duke University School of Medicine explained as NeuroscienceNews.com quotes:
This finding of fluid, fluctuating, malleable age challenges the longstanding conception of a unidirectional upward trajectory of biological age over the life course,
Previous reports have hinted at the possibility of short-term fluctuations in biological age, but the question of whether such changes are reversible has, until now, remained unexplored. Critically, the triggers of such changes were also unknown.
The new research denies the idea that biological age has a unidirectional upward trajectory during our lives.
The new study was published in Cell.
