Does stress make you age faster?

Yes, and it is now measurable. Scientists can read from your DNA how old your cells are, independent of your birth year. Early childhood adversity, an accumulation of stressful experiences and poverty are associated in multiple studies with a higher biological age than your calendar age would predict. The direction is consistent across studies, although the precise magnitude varies from study to study¹.

Stress damages your cells in multiple ways. The protective caps on your chromosomes wear down more quickly. Cells stop dividing earlier, but continue to release inflammatory substances. Large studies in humans show that prolonged stress is associated with an increased risk of diabetes and fatty liver disease².

Researchers at the National Institute on Aging describe how a combination of poverty, inequality and chronic stress causes the body to age more rapidly, a phenomenon called weathering. Measurable signs include elevated oxidative damage, earlier DNA damage and higher inflammatory markers. This represents a robust association; complete evidence for direct causality is still lacking³. In cell and animal research, prolonged stress also appears to undermine a protein that protects cells against damage, further accelerating aging. Whether this works in exactly the same way in humans is not yet clear⁴.

There is good news as well. In a study of nearly 24,000 participants, people with better cardiovascular health were biologically younger. Every 10-point higher score on a measure of cardiovascular health corresponded to an average of 1.14 years lower biological age. Reducing chronic physical burden through healthy lifestyle habits therefore appears to demonstrably slow the biological clock⁵.