Comprehensive changes in lifestyle could reverse ageing

A pilot study, published in The Lancet Oncology, shows that comprehensive lifestyle changes may increase the length of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that control cell ageing. This is the first study to show that any intervention might lengthen telomeres over time. If the findings are confirmed by larger randomised controlled trials, scientists will begin to have a better understanding of how lifestyle changes may have the potential to reverse ageing on a cellular level.  

Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes at the end of chromosomes that directly affect how quickly cells age — they protect the ends of chromosomes and help them remain stable, rather like the tips of shoelaces that keep them from fraying. As telomeres become shorter and their structural integrity weakens, then cells age and die more quickly.  

Telomere length is an indication of biological age. Shorter telomere length is associated with an increased risk of premature death and age-related diseases, including many forms of cancer (including breast, prostate, colorectal, and lung cancers), cardiovascular disease, vascular dementia, obesity, stroke, osteoporosis, infectious diseases, and diabetes.  

Professor Dean Ornish and colleagues at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University of California, San Francisco, USA, did a pilot study comparing two small groups of men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer and who had not undergone conventional treatments with surgery or radiation. The study group of 10 men were asked to make comprehensive lifestyle changes, whereas the control group of 25 men were not asked to make any changes to their lifestyle.  

The lifestyle changes included adopting a whole foods plant-based diet, moderate exercise, stress management techniques (such as meditation and yoga), and greater intimacy and social support. While previous research has shown that adopting such lifestyle changes can have many medical benefits – including reversing the progression of heart disease – no study over time has ever shown that lifestyle changes may have a beneficial effect on telomeres.

Using state-of-the-art scientific measurement techniques to assess the value of a low-tech intervention, the researchers measured the length of the participants’ telomeres at the start of the study, and again after 5 years.  

In the group who made comprehensive lifestyle changes, telomere length increased significantly by an average of 10%, but in the control group, telomere length decreased by an average of 3%. Furthermore, there was a significant dose-response relationship in both groups between the degree of lifestyle change and the extent of change in telomere length: the more the participants made positive changes to their lifestyle, the greater their telomeres increased in length.  

This study was not designed to detect the effects of lifestyle changes on the participants’ prostate cancer, although an earlier randomized controlled trial by the same group of investigators showed that positive lifestyle interventions may delay the progression of early stage prostate cancer.

According to Professor Ornish, “The implications of this relatively small pilot study may go beyond men with prostate cancer. If validated by large-scale randomized controlled trials, these comprehensive lifestyle changes may significantly reduce the risk of a wide variety of diseases and premature mortality. Our genes, and our telomeres, are a predisposition, but they are not necessarily our fate.”