Can eating salmon slow aging at the cellular level?
Over the years, evidence has mounted that consumption of omega-3 fatty acids may help ward off a laundry list of ailments, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, colon cancer, some neurological diseases and age-related macular degeneration. Now scientists have discovered an explanation for at least some of the health benefits. It appears that consuming omega-3 fatty acids slows the rate of aging at a cellular level.
Researchers followed some 600 patients with heart disease for five years, to determine whether there was a correlation between consumption of omega-3 fatty acids--found in fish such as salmon, trout, sardines and herring--and the rate of biological aging. At the outset of the study, and again after five-years of follow up, blood levels of omega-3s and telomere length were measured. Telomeres are a structure at the end of a chromosome involved in the replication and stability of the chromosome. Genetic factors and environmental stressors can shorten the length of the telomere, with telomere length becoming an emerging marker of biological age.
The findings of the study were published in the Jan. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. As Ramin Farzaneh-Far, M.D, an assistant professor of medicine at theUniversity of California at San Francisco, and the lead author on thestudy, reported, "There was an inverse relationship between baseline blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids and the rate of telomere shortening over 5 year." In other words, as omega-3 consumption went up, the rate of biological aging went down.
While we don't yet know whether healthy individuals experience a similar slowdown in cellular aging, science has provided plenty of other strong reasons to add omega-3 fatty acids to our diets.
