Menopause, and the insomnia that often goes
along with it, can speed aging in women, two new studies suggest.
"For
decades, scientists have disagreed over whether menopause causes aging or aging
causes menopause," said Steve Horvath, senior author of both papers.
"It's
like the chicken or the egg: which came first? Our study is the first to
demonstrate that menopause makes you age faster," said Horvath, a
professor of human genetics and biostatistics at the David Geffen School of
Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
He and
his colleagues said they found that menopause boosts cellular aging by an
average of 6 percent.
"That
doesn't sound like much, but it adds up over a woman's life span," Horvath
added in a UCLA news release.
For
example, a woman who began early menopause at age 42 would be a full year older
biologically at age 50 than a woman that same age who began menopause at age
50.
Insomnia,
which often accompanies menopause, can also lead to faster biological aging,
according to the second study.
"Not
getting restorative sleep may do more than just affect our functioning the next
day; it might also influence the rate at which our biological clock
ticks," said Judith Carroll. She is an assistant professor of psychiatry
at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and first author
of the sleep study.
"In
the women we studied, those reporting symptoms such as restless sleep, waking
repeatedly at night, having difficulty falling asleep and waking too early in
the morning tended to be older biologically than women of similar chronological
age who reported no symptoms," she said.
The
studies included more than 5,000 women and were published July 25 in the
journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Biological
Psychiatry.
Robert
Preidt
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