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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Obesity, smoking hasten ageing
By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Obesity increases ageing by nine years, and cigarette smoking, by seven years. Sounds like 16 years off your biological life, if you smoke and are obese at the same time.
That’s the result of a new study on the effect of obesity and cigarette smoking on human genes. The study was led by Tim Spector of the Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology Unit at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, UK. The study is co-sponsored by the Hypertension Research Center of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey, USA.
Obesity and cigarette smoking, the study goes, are states of heightened stress due to reactive chemicals in the body and bodily inflammation. This heightened stress “increases the rate of telomere erosion per replication.”
Telomere is the protective cover in genes against wear and tear in the process of producing proteins and genetic materials in the body. Increased predisposition to inflammation also accelerates the death of white blood cells.
Both states contribute to the increased destruction of telomere as we age. Normally, telomere shortens steadily at an average rate of 27 base pairs (bp) every year. In effect, each time a cell divides, the proteins involved in replicating the DNA fail to copy the telomeres, causing them to get shorter and shorter throughout the years.
In the study that involved 1,122 white women aged 18 to 76 years, telomeres in obese women were 240 bp shorter than those in lean women; and each pack smoked per year resulted to additional five bp lost, or 18 percent. The study group had 11 percent with body mass index greater than 30 (clinically obese), and about 18 percent were active smokers (at least a pack a day for 40 years).
Obesity and smoking, in effect, says Spector, is one way of distinguishing “between growing older and dying earlier.” To some, it is a get one-take one proposition to self-destruction.
(July 13, 2005 issue)
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