Researchers have found evidence that the loss of a loved one at a young age can have repercussions before people reach middle age, with research suggesting that the stress associated with grief can accelerate the aging process.
Scientists discovered biological markers of faster aging in people who had lost a parent, partner, sibling or child. In others who had not lost a loved one, the markers were absent.
The finding suggests that grief and mourning take a toll on the body’s tissues and may increase the risk of future health problems. But it also raises the prospect that counseling and effective social support could help in the aftermath of a death.
Allison Aiello, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, said losing a loved one is a “significant stressor” and a life experience consistently linked to poorer mental health, cognitive impairment, heart and metabolic problems, and earlier death.
“Our research reveals a significant association between experiencing losses from childhood through adulthood and biological markers of aging,” Aiello said. The decline in tissue and organ function caused by accelerated aging may partly explain why grief can have such an impact on health.
The researchers drew on data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which followed participants from their teenage years into adulthood. They specifically looked at people who lost a loved one before age 18 and from ages 19 to 43.
Biological aging was assessed by analyzing people’s DNA for chemical changes that accumulate over the years. These epigenetic clocks can reveal whether a person’s biological age is older or younger than their chronological age, which affects their risk of disease later in life, Aiello said.
Of the 3,963 individuals studied, nearly 40% had lost a loved one in adulthood. Those who had experienced more grief had a significantly older biological age than those who had not lost loved ones.
Considering the results, published in Jama Network OpenAiello said research should now focus on whether helping survivors with counseling and coping strategies reduces the aging effect. “These insights can inform clinical and public health approaches to improving health outcomes after loss,” she said.
The study appears next to separate work about the impact of a healthy diet and added sugar on biological age. According to the study, women in the U.S. who ate a diet rich in vitamins and minerals had a younger biological age than women with a poorer diet. But even for the women who ate healthy, every gram of added sugar was associated with an increase in biological age.
“It is the first evidence of the effect of added sugars on our epigenetic aging,” said Elissa Epel, one of the paper’s authors and a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
The researchers analyzed the dietary data of 342 black and white women from Northern California and compared them to healthy eating habits, such as the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds.
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Women who ate healthier had a lower biological age, according to their epigenetic clocks, but the scientists saw faster biological aging in those who consumed foods with added sugars. The women in the study ate between 2.7g and 316g of added sugar per day.
“It appears that both a diet high in nutrients and a diet low in added sugars are important,” said Barbara Laraia, one of the study’s lead authors and a professor of public health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dorothy Chiu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and first author of the paper, said she expected similar effects in men.
According to UK guidelines, free sugars (sugars added to food and drinks, and naturally occurring in products such as honey and smoothies) should not make up more than 5% of daily calories. Adults should consume no more than 30g, which is the equivalent of seven sugar cubes a day.