Women Who Give Birth May Have a Reduced Lifespan of Up to 11 Years

krnel (78) in health • 7 years ago (edited)

Telomeres are found at the ends of chromosomes in DNA. Like a cap, they protect the chromosomes from deterioration or fusing with other chromosomes. The length of telomeres has been linked with longevity and health. Telomeres get shorter over time through DNA replication.

Source

The aging of the body and the development of diseases is affected by lifestyle factors such as diet and activities, and correlates with telomere lengths being shorter. Telomeres in our cells get shorter as we age, but having shorter than average lengths are associated with increases in age-related diseases and a decreased lifespan.

Shorter telomeres correlate with an increased risk for cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and inflammation. Smoking and obese people show shorter telomeres. It's not just diet and activities, but stress levels and other environmental factors like sleeping more and working less are correlated with longer telomeres.

A recent study has shown a correlation between women who have given birth and shorter telomeres, compared to women who have not given birth and have longer telomeres. The implication is that giving birth reduced the longevity of chromosomes and the lives of those women.

DNA data from 1554 women who had between 1 and 5 or more live births was analyzed. Each year of increased age in these women was associated with 9 to 10 fewer base pairs in the chromosomes, equivalent to about 11 years of accelerated cellular aging. Women who had given birth had a mean of 5919 base pairs compared to the other women who has a mean of 6104 base pairs. The number of births was associated with shorter telomere length (T/S ratio), meaning the more births a women had, the shorter the telomeres were.

The shorter telomere length may be because of giving birth, or it may just be that these women already had shorter telomeres before they gave birth. These results are not conclusive. Other factors could be the reason for the shorter telomere lengths. Previous studies have shown that smoking produces 4.6 years of cellular aging, and obesity 8.8 years of cellular aging.

References:

Telomere
Telomeres, lifestyle, cancer, and aging
Shammas MA. Telomeres, lifestyle, cancer, and aging. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care. 2011;14(1):28-34. DOI: 10.1097/MCO.0b013e32834121b1
A Z Pollack, K Rivers, K A Ahrens. Parity associated with telomere length among US reproductive age women. Human Reproduction, 2018; DOI: 10.1093/humrep/dey024

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7 years ago by krnel (78)

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valued-customer (67) · 7 years ago

Even granting that there is some mechanism that shortens the telomeres of women who have children, their children have 100% longer lifespans than those of women who do not have children.

I'm sure it's a net benefit to humanity.

I appreciate you pointing out that while there is an apparent correlation, no causal mechanism or proof of causation has yet been proposed.

Thanks!

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krnel (78) · 7 years ago

their children have 100% longer lifespans than those of women who do not have children

Hahaha! Funny guy ;) If this study is accurate, it's a worthy tradeoff indeed :)

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youhavewings (58) · 7 years ago

I've been reading a lot about telomeres lately. Interesting topic. There was some lab in Texas that was success in reversing this with the first human participant in their study. As to giving birth shortening one's life span - I have to say that the trade off is worth it to have the experience of being a mother. You will hear a lot of people say that they don't remember life before their children - there is something very true to that. It's a beautiful experience. I would like to research this topic deeper though because I would love to live to hold my grandchild one day.

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krnel (78) · 7 years ago (edited)

I agree, the trade off is worth it :) How did they reverse and lengthen the telomeres?

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khanaasim (45) · 7 years ago

Telomere duration shortens with age. innovative shortening of telomeres ends in senescence, apoptosis, or oncogenic transformation of somatic cells, affecting the fitness and lifespan of an man or woman. Shorter telomeres had been related to elevated occurrence of diseases and negative survival. The charge of telomere shortening can be both elevated or reduced by using unique way of life elements. better desire of eating regimen and sports has exquisite capacity to lessen the price of telomere shortening or at least prevent immoderate telomere attrition, main to delayed onset of age-associated illnesses and accelerated lifespan. This assessment highlights the role of telomeres in getting old and describes the way of life elements which may additionally have an effect on telomeres, human fitness, and getting old

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valued-customer (67) · 7 years ago

It is probable that much of what you say here is true, but very little has been proven. Far too often biases of researchers cause papers to be misleading and false causality is practically ubiquitous in science.

Correlation is not causation.

Thanks for pointing to the science, though, as it is the only mechanism that applies reason and data to these issues. People need to consider science far more critically, however, and call misleading researchers on the carpet to hold them to account.

American archeology has been a century long example of exactly the kinds of problems caused by politics, the influence of money, and bias resulting from self-aggrandizing researchers that has retarded scientific progress in the field. For a hundred years research that challenged the Clovis First theory has been denied, derided and disincentivized, and those that challenged that paradigm have had their careers ended, their reputations falsely degraded, and been prevented from proving that Clovis First was completely false.

Rather than the earliest date for human occupancy of the Americas being ~11.5kya as Clovis First held, new research indicates that humans have been in N. America since over 100kya.

The problems glaringly obvious in American archeological research impact every scientific field, if less obviously. It's long past time we fix the problem, which is exacerbated by the control of grant money by foundations and government with political agendas.

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enigma84 (66) · 7 years ago

Thank you for this post, it was interesting to read about telomeres but it is sad that giving birth makes them shorter.

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valued-customer (67) · 7 years ago

That's not what he said.

"...it may just be that these women already had shorter telomeres before they gave birth."

It may be that women with shorter telomeres are more fertile, or more likely to have kids for other reasons, or there may be other reasons that shorter telomeres result from having kids, such as the stress of government and other institutions causing harm to their children.

It is important to read science papers carefully as semantics which are considered inconsequential in normal usage are of immense import in science. For example the statement 'women that give birth die younger' is hugely different than 'women that give birth may die younger.'

The first statement requires careful research and consideration of a statistically significant sample of child-bearing women just to prove or disprove it, and this doesn't even address why that might be true (or not), while the second statement is just true and requires no further study at all.