Early menopause, insomnia makes women age faster
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 26-07-2016
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"Not getting restorative sleep may do more than just affect our functioning the next day; it might also influence the rate at which our biological clock ticks," said first author Judith Carroll, adding: "In the women we studied, those reporting symptoms such as restless sleep, waking repeatedly at night, having difficulty falling asleep, and waking too early in the morning tended to be older biologically than women of similar chronological age who reported no symptoms."
For their findings, both studies used a "biological clock" developed by Horvath, which has become a widely used method for tracking the epigenetic shift in the genome. Epigenetics is the study of changes to DNA packaging that influence which genes are expressed but don't affect the DNA sequence itself.