American specialists from Brigham Women's Hospital studied a common form of anxiety, the so-called phobic anxiety, and discovered an interesting phenomenon.
It turns out that middle-aged people with any phobias have shorter telomeres than others. Most likely, it is the possible accelerated aging that provokes phobic anxiety in humans - the body literally fears premature death, and the person feels it.
Telomeres are protein complexes located at the ends of chromosomes. Their function is to protect chromosomes and genetic information at the time of cell division. Scientists consider telomeres to be markers of cellular and biological aging. In addition, when telomere length is reduced, the risk of developing dementia, heart disease, and cancer increases. The cause of death from old age, according to experts, is also a critical shortening of telomeres.
In a new large-scale study, American scientists studied blood samples from more than 5.2 thousand 42-69-year-old women. They analyzed the phobic symptoms described by the participants in the questionnaires and the length of the telomeres. It turned out that people with severe phobic anxiety have much shorter telomeres. As the author of the work Olivia Okereke notes, the data obtained provide an answer to the question of how stress affects the rate of human aging.
Their research has shown that there is a relationship between psychological problems (phobic anxiety) and premature aging. True, the researchers did not aim to establish a direct causal relationship between rapid aging and stress - in order to confirm this, a number of additional studies will have to be carried out.
The results obtained by American scientists open the way for further study of the effect of stress and psychological problems on telomere length and, therefore, on life expectancy. Perhaps, in the future, this knowledge will help specialists in the creation of drugs that can protect people from the negative effects of nervous stress on the body.