Having More Kids Could Slow Down Aging, Study Says

A new study found out that women can slow down the aging process by having more children as it keeps the telomeres into a good level. The said research was published in the journal PLOS One.

Researchers from Simon Fraser University in Canada gathered the data from 75 indigenous Guatemalan women from two neighboring rural communities. In 2000, they assessed how many children these women gave birth to. They also collected saliva samples and DNA swabs from the inside of the participants' cheeks to measure their telomere -- the protective tips that can be found at the end of DNA's strand, very essential in the human body as it helps in slowing down aging.

Thirteen years later, a second set was collected. Surprisingly, the study discovered that women who gave birth to more surviving offspring had longer telomeres, compared to women who had fewer.

"Our analyses show that increased offspring number across 13 years of observation attenuated telomere shortening, suggesting that, in our study population, having more children may slow the pace of cellular aging," the researchers said.

Researchers then hypothesized that the results could be explained by two contributing factors. One, the estrogen might have something to do with the results.

Pablo Nepomnaschy head of the Maternal and Child Health Laboratory at the Simon Fraser University confirmed that estrogen has a strong antioxidant effect and researchers have believed that estrogen might have protected the cells of women against telomere shortening. "Estrogen functions as a potent antioxidant that protects cells against telomere shortening," the professor added.

Other contributing factor may be social environment. Experts believe that the participants who were tested received a large amount of social support from friends and families that could possibly increase their metabolic energy and eventually slow down the aging process.

"Greater support leads to an increase in the amount of metabolic energy that can be allocated to tissue maintenance, thereby slowing down the process of aging," Nepomnaschy concluded.

Thus, the team suggested that the next study should focus on the association between reproductive frequency and biological aging in women from different ethnicities, as per Medical News Today.