Research Paper Volume 15, Issue 6 pp 1833—1839
Potential reversal of biological age in women following an 8-week methylation-supportive diet and lifestyle program: a case series
- 1 Institute for Functional Medicine, Federal Way, WA 98003, USA
- 2 Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284, USA
- 3 American Nutrition Association, Hinsdale, IL 60521, USA
Received: January 1, 2023 Accepted: March 1, 2023 Published: March 22, 2023
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204602How to Cite
Copyright: © 2023 Fitzgerald et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Here we report on a case series of six women who completed a methylation-supportive diet and lifestyle program designed to impact DNA methylation and measures of biological aging. The intervention consisted of an 8-week program that included diet, sleep, exercise and relaxation guidance, supplemental probiotics and phytonutrients and nutritional coaching. DNA methylation and biological age analysis (Horvath DNAmAge clock (2013), normalized using the SeSAMe pipeline [a]) was conducted on blood samples at baseline and at the end of the 8-week period. Five of the six participants exhibited a biological age reduction of between 1.22 and 11.01 years from their baseline biological age. There was a statistically significant (p=.039) difference in the participants' mean biological age before (55.83 years) and after (51.23 years) the 8-week diet and lifestyle intervention, with an average decrease of 4.60 years. The average chronological age at the start of the program was 57.9 years and all but one participant had a biological age younger than their chronological age at the start of the program, suggesting that biological age changes were unrelated to disease improvement and instead might be attributed to underlying aging mechanisms.