Beware! Depression can make your cells die faster which in result could reduce your life years. A recent study, conducted in Netherland, has found relationship between depression and cell aging.
This research, published in Molecular Psychiatry on November 12, included 1900 patients of major depressive disorders and 500 people with no depression history. Researchers basically measured cells’ telomeres, which serve as caps for chromosomes and they are responsible for protecting DNA during cell division.
Every time the cell divides, telomeres decrease a little in length, thus they provide proper index of cell’s age.
People with depression had shorter telomeres than people with no depression which simply means depressed people have lesser cell life than a normal healthy person.
This study has excluded all other factors that add to cells’ aging, like smoking, drinking etc.
Josine Verhoeven, a researcher in Free University (Amsterdam) and author of this study, summarized the results, “Psychological distress, as experienced by depressed persons, has a large, detrimental impact on the ‘wear and tear’ of a person’s body, resulting in accelerated biological aging. The findings might help explain the variety of health complaints often experienced by people with major depression”
Although there is a counter drug available that can actually make telomeres grow efficiently, Ms. Verhoeven suggests a healthy lifestyle can help a lot.
According to her, “A healthy lifestyle, such as enough physical exercise, not smoking and a healthy diet, might be of even greater importance in depressed individuals than it is in the non-depressed.”
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