Maintaining a healthy lifestyle as an adult is a delicate balance of consuming an enriched diet while also still being able to indulge in our favorite guilty pleasures—moderately, of course. Over time, it becomes harder for the human body to metabolize nutrients from food and break down certain compounds like sugar. That’s why many people choose to add more plant-rich foods to their diet, take supplements, and prioritize exercise and sleep to help reverse their biological age. However, new research now suggests that eliminating added sugar and temporarily switching to a vegan diet could help you live longer.
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Biological age refers to the age of your cells and tissues, whereas chronological age is how many years you’ve been on Earth. For instance, a 45-year-old could be as healthy as a 35-year-old with the right lifestyle habits, including diet and exercise.
While genetics is a contributor that’s out of your control, you can monitor your sugar intake. According to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California San Francisco, even when people eat an otherwise healthy diet, each gram of added sugar ages our biological clock.
For the study, researchers examined how three different ways of “healthy eating” affected an epigenetic clock, “a biochemical test that can approximate both health and lifespan,” according to a press release posted by EurekAlert! It doesn’t come as a surprise that those who ate healthier showed younger-looking cells.
“We knew that high levels of added sugars are linked to worsened metabolic health and early disease, possibly more than any other dietary factor. Now we know that accelerated epigenetic aging is underlying this relationship, and this is likely one of many ways that excessive sugar intake limits healthy longevity,” explained author and behavioral sciences professor Elissa Epel, PhD, in the release.
Dorothy Chiu, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health and the study's first author. She also confirmed that the findings “align with existing recommendations for preventing disease and promoting health, and they highlight the potency of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients in particular.”
According to New York-Presbyterian, the average American consumes 17 teaspoons of added sugar a day, which equates to about 57 pounds of added sugar a year. Added sugar can be found in soda, candies, baked goods, and even masked in healthier foods like granola.
Consuming an unhealthy amount of sugar can result in serious health issues like diabetes, certain cancers, heart disease, and obesity. However, cutting out just 10 grams of added sugar per day can add 2.4 months to your life over time, according to the study.
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Additionally, following a vegan diet can help you live longer. In a separate study published in the BMC Medicine journal, researchers found that eating only vegan food for eight consecutive weeks can also reverse your biological clock.
Vegan-friendly meals consist of vegetables, grains, nuts, fruits, and other foods made from plants, per the National Health Service (NHS). The biggest difference between a vegetarian and a vegan is that the latter doesn’t consume any animal byproducts, including dairy and eggs. However, like vegetarians, vegans also don’t eat meat.
For the study, scientists tasked 21 pairs of adult identical twins with consuming different diets. One ate vegan meals for two months, while the other followed an omnivorous diet. Their findings proved that going vegan short-term can have positive effects on the body, including one’s biological age.
“Notably, our findings reveal significant reductions in key system-specific disease processes, including inflammation, heart, liver, metabolic, and hormonal systems,” wrote the authors.
“This nuanced approach aligns with previous research demonstrating that vegan and plant-based diets are associated with lower levels of inflammatory markers, lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, reduced risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), improve glycemic control and other metabolic factors in individuals with type 2 diabetes, and regulated hormonal level outputs in responses such as hot flashes,” per the report.
While eliminating added sugars and eating vegan meals can help you live longer, it’s important to remember that other factors like alcohol intake, sleep quality, and lack of exercise can still impose a threat to your biological age.
