LONDON, June 14 (UPI) -- Obesity and cigarettes accelerate the aging process -- an average nine years for obese women and seven years for heavy smokers, London researchers say.
The research, led by Tim Spector of St. Thomas Hospital and reported in the British journal Lancet, examined 1,122 women in concluding fat and cigarettes accelerate the demise of telomeres, the caps on chromosomes, in white blood cells.
"We've known obesity increases your risk of many diseases, and of dying early. What's novel here is that it seems that fat itself actually accelerates the aging process," Spector told the Washington Post.
The typical woman's telomeres shorten by 27 DNA base pairs a year, said Spector of the joint research with New Jersey's University of Medicine and Dentistry.
Heavy smokers -- those who puffed a pack a day for 40 years -- wore off 200 additional base pairs.
Women who are obese, or those with a body-mass index greater than 30, wore off even more -- 240 base pairs.
Spector told Nature the findings may give people another reason to lose weight or quit smoking.
