New research links kindness, telomeres, and even skin ageing — in surprising ways
This week’s Better You, Backed by Science is about ageing – and how we can slow it in an unexpected way.
So researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ran a fascinating experiment on ageing.
They asked 142 volunteers to meditate daily in a randomised controlled trial – but not all meditation was the same.
Some did mindfulness meditation and some did a compassion-kindness based meditation (known as Metta or Loving-Kindness). They were compared with some people who didn’t do any meditation at all, for comparison.
They did a short practice every day for 6 weeks.
Blood samples were taken at the beginning and end, and the researchers measured the rate of loss of telomeres – end caps on their DNA.
Telomeres
An often-used analogy is to think of telomeres like aglets, those plastic end caps on shoelaces. Aglets gradually wear down over time due to general wear and tear.
Telomeres also wear down – it’s known as telomere attrition – on account of stress, lifestyle factors, and cell-division itself. Their length is considered one of the most reliable biological indicators of ageing.
By looking at the rate of telomere attrition in the control group, they knew how much occurs on average over a 6-week period.
The results?
Mindfulness didn’t have a significant effect on telomere attrition in this study.
But in those who focused on compassion and kindness, telomere attrition slowed.
And significantly so!
A focus on compassion and kindness slowed ageing at the genetic level.
How?
That’s the million-dollar question.
On a general level, it’s related to the fact that kindness produces physiological responses that are largely opposite to those produced by stress.
When we map out what happens inside the body when a person experiences stress, an experience of kindness generally has opposite effects.
It’s well known that stress speeds up ageing. It makes sense, then, that kindness slows it down.
This study shows that the effect can be traced to the level of telomeres.
The Opposite of Stress
There’s many more of these opposites. Here are a few:
- Stress increases blood pressure, kindness reduces it
- Stress suppresses immune function, kindness supports immune function
- Stress dials up stress centres of the brain, kindness dials them down
- Stress can be damaging to mental health, kindness supports mental health
- Stress biases the autonomic system (ANS) toward sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”), while kindness tends to support parasympathetic (“rest-and-restore”) activity.
External Glow
Kindness can even help our skin.
It’s been said that a kind heart makes someone glow on the inside. Research now suggest that it can also make them glow on the outside – visibly.
Scientists were studying the effect of stress on skin cells. When they subjected skin cells to stress in the lab there was a large increase in levels of free radicals and inflammation in the skin.
Free radicals are molecules that wreak havoc in the body in large amounts. The body uses natural antioxidants to mop them up, but when levels overwhelm the body’s ability to eliminate them, that’s when we get accelerated ageing and increased risk of cardiovascular disease, memory loss, and dementia.
So the researchers repeated the experiment, this time exposing the skin cells to oxytocin – a hormone strongly associated with bonding, trust, and kindness-related states.
For its latter role, it’s essentially a “kindness hormone.”
The result?
Levels of free radicals and inflammation dropped significantly.
The conclusion?
Kindness hormones slow ageing of skin.
And how do we increase our kindness hormone levels?
By being kind!
Well, it is the opposite of stress, after all.
Try this
So how do we tap into this kindness-based fountain of youth?
The purpose of compassion-kindness based meditations is to help us to build warm feelings towards others. So over the next week, try to cultivate these feelings.
Here’s a few ways to do that:
In life:
Try to be patient with people.
Listen to people and resist the temptation to rush in with your own opinions.
Be helpful as often as you can.
Say thank you when someone pays you a compliment or helps you in some way.
And try to cultivate the mindset that you never know what people are dealing with behind closed-doors. This can help us be more tolerant and accepting of people, especially when we might not appreciate their words or actions.
In meditation:
In the meditation study, the volunteers did a meditation practice called Metta. We say:
“May you be happy, well, safe, and live with ease.”
Usually, we do it 3 times first towards ourselves, and then to loved ones, people we don’t know that well, challenging people, and all beings.
The idea is to gradually widen your circle of compassionate-kind feelings.
The exact words used in Metta don’t have to match what I’ve written here. There’s lots of variations. The words are not as important as the sentiment, so feel free to play around with the words to build the warmest feelings.
Want to explore more?
I always make a YouTube video based on these Better You, Backed by Science emails.
If you’d like to view this one, here’s the direct link.
And here’s a link to my entire Better You, Backed by Science playlist, with a video on every single previous email going back to the middle of last year.
The studies behind this week’s email
Telomere study. Here’s the link to the paper.
Skin cells study. Here’s the link to the paper.
Learn more about kindness hormones in my recent social media post. Here’s the link.
More on how kindness is the opposite of stress and other research on the physiological effects of kindness. Here’s a link to my book.
More
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