Columbia University in New York found that two additional years of schooling translated to a two to three per cent slower pace of ageing. Photo / 123RF
Columbia University in New York found that two additional years of schooling translated to a two to three per cent slower pace of ageing. Photo / 123RF
Staying at school until the age of 18 slows down ageing compared to people who left at 16, scientists have found.
It is well known that education helps people live longer and protects against disease, but the research is the first to show one of the reasons is because it actually slows down the ageing process at a cellular level.
Columbia University in New York found that two additional years of schooling translated to a two to three per cent slower pace of ageing.
“But there are a bunch of challenges in figuring out how that happens and, critically, whether interventions to promote educational attainment will contribute to healthy longevity.”
People participating in the study were asked to undergo blood and genetic tests to find out how their cells and DNA are ageing. Photo / 123RF
For the research the team analysed data from 14,106 people enrolled in Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing study first initiated in 1948 that spans three generations.
People participating in the study were asked to undergo blood and genetic tests to find out how their cells and DNA are ageing.
The turnover of cells, and the function of mitochondrial DNA - the cell’s battery - grow sluggish over time, and this slowing down can be used like a clock to measure how well someone is ageing.
While disease or poor lifestyle can make the clock speed up, healthy lifestyles have been shown to slow it down. Now education has also been found to have an impact on cells.
Previously experts thought the education effect was based on people having more knowledge, and a greater ability to take care of themselves.
Scientists compared the ageing of people whose parents or siblings had less education than they did to find the impact of upward educational mobility. It suggests that national health could be improved by ensuring more people stay in education.
They found that siblings with higher educational mobility tended to age slower compared with their less educated siblings.
Role of upward educational mobility
Gloria Graf, first author and PhD candidate, said: “A key confound in studies like these is that people with different levels of education tend to come from families with different educational backgrounds and different levels of other resources.
“To address these confounds, we focused on educational mobility, how much more (or less) education a person completed relative to their parents, and sibling differences in educational attainment - how much more (or less) education a person completed relative to their siblings.
“These study designs control for differences between families and allow us to isolate the effects of education.”
She added: “Our findings support the hypothesis that interventions to promote educational attainment will slow the pace of biological ageing and promote longevity.
“We found that upward educational mobility was associated both with a slower pace of ageing and decreased risk of death.
“In fact, up to half of the educational gradient in mortality we observed was explained by healthier ageing trajectories among better-educated participants.”
Previous studies have shown that a lack of education can be as deadly as smoking, with the potential to knock 10 years off a person’s lifespan.
Scientists found that siblings with higher educational mobility tended to age slower compared with their less educated siblings. Photo / 123RF
Conversely, a study by Oxford University and University College London found that gaining a degree dramatically decreases the chance of suffering deadly heart disease.
The researchers found that 3.6 years of additional education, which is similar to an undergraduate university degree, was associated with a one third lower risk of coronary heart disease.
It is known that better educated people were also less likely to smoke, have lower body mass index and have a more favourable blood fat profile.
The research was published in the journal Jama Network Open.
