Pregnancy Adds to Women’s Biological Age
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A study by the Columbia University Mailman
School of Public Health and published in Proceedings of
National Academy of Sciences quantified the effect of pregnancy
on biological aging. The study included more than 1,700 men and women from the
Philippines aged 20 to 22 years old. The researchers concluded that the energy
expended in reproduction comes at an expense. Across six epigenetic clock
measurements, pregnancy was found to accelerate the women’s biological aging
compared to those that had no pregnancies, and multiple pregnancies accelerated
the women’s biological age on two of the epigenetic clock measures. Pregnancy
did not result in aging of the men in the study.
This article appears in the July 2024 issue of Natural Awakenings.
