We currently live in a culture that is obsessed with anti-ageing, and while you have probably heard someone attribute their youthful-looking skin to “good genetics”, Harvard scientists have now discovered that’s not quite the case.
Researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre at Harvard University have discovered that it is the behaviour of your genetics that can cause a youthful glow. The study took samples from 158 white women – aged 20 to 74-years-old – and found that the women who appeared younger than their age had genes that behaved similar to a younger woman. Simply put, youthful looking women had genes that demonstrated increased activity including DNA repair, cell division response to oxidative stress and protein metabolism
Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians CEO Alexa Kimball commented on the findings, saying: “We were particularly surprised by the identification of a group of women who not only displayed a much more youthful skin appearance than would be expected based on their chronological age, but who also presented a specific gene expression profile mimicking the biology of much younger skin.
“It seems that their skin looked younger because it behaved younger.”
Further, if you needed another reason to slip, slop, slap the study found that UV exposure is a main accelerator of skin ageing; and that the ageing process accelerated in the 60s and 70s.
