Your Grandparents’ Education May Reveal Clues About Your Real Age

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Researchers at Drexel University and colleagues from the University of California and the University of North Carolina studied data across three generations — education of parents and grandparents and health data from parents and their children.

Image credit: Mohamed Hassan – Pixabay

We know that Eating well, exercising and attending regular doctor appointments can support a long healthy life.

But a new study identified one possible factor beyond our control: whether you had a grandparent who went to college.

The team found a statistically significant association between grandparents’ education level and their grandchildren’s epigenetic-based “real” age (short definition of what is meant by “real” (how old an individual is based on their health profile and cells).

The study’s finding that grandchildren of college-educated grandparents showed slower biological aging (i.e., younger biological age relative to chronological age) than those whose grandparents did not graduate from college is based on five different epigenetic-based aging clocks. These clocks use a saliva swab to examine a biological process known as DNA methylation — which changes as the body ages — to predict an individual’s age based on their health profile at the cellular level.

“The research community has established a link between how social factors, socioeconomic factors, and childhood adversity can contribute to health trajectories,” said lead author Agus Surachman, PhD, an assistant professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health, who completed his research for the study during his time as a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, San Francisco.

“We know from animal studies that health is transmitted across several generations, from grandparents to grandchildren. But we now have robust human data that shows that not only do parents’ socioeconomic factors play a role in their children’s health, but that influence goes back an extra generation as well.”

Previous human studies in this area found that exposure to traumatic experiences, such as the Holocaust and Tutsi genocide, can influence the methylation of genes among survivors and their children. The data in this study fills an important gap by examining a general population, and a common crude index of social stress exposures — level of education. The authors say parents’ education level is a useful metric for children’s early life socioeconomic status and exposure to social stressors.

“Parental early life socioeconomic advantages may be associated with better health profile of their offspring through epigenetic mechanisms, especially through the maternal line,” said Surachman in a press release. “This understanding about the intergenerational nature of transmission of social advantages and health should make us re-think our values. I’d like to see more resources invested in education and health, a factor which shapes offspring health before we are even born.”

Epigenetic clocks are promising tools for estimating length of life, and can offer insights about the risk for chronic disease and other health outcomes. Tests can cost consumers hundreds of dollars, but experts say the cost may go down as the technology improves.

Mothers were recruited to the NHLBI Growth and Health Study (NGHS 1) when they were 9-10 years old, and then re-recruited three decades later for the National Growth and Health Study (NGHS 2), to gather health and education information and the health information to determine their youngest child’s (ages 2-17) epigenetic aging, or biological age.

The researchers controlled for other factors that may influence child health, such as age of the grandchildren, sex, children’s body-mass index (BMI), and characteristics of the mother — the mother’s childhood family structure, mother’s health profile and the mother’s marital status.

The team also  investigated the role of maternal health in the intergenerational transmission between grandparent education and grandchild biological age. Using various health indicators from the mother’s childhood and adulthood, they found that maternal health explained 14. 5% of the link between grandparents’ education and their grandchildren’s epigenetic age.

“The link between a grandparent’s socioeconomic status and a grandchild’s epigenetic age is a remarkable finding, across generations,” said senior author Elissa Epel, PhD, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

This opens up a myriad of possible explanations and will need to be replicated. For now, we know that the mother’s poorer metabolic health is a partial mediator of this relationship.”

The researchers are studying how grandparents and parents influence offspring as they become adults. They’re also investigating social and psychological factors affecting accelerated epigenetic aging in people with chronic conditions. The authors note that more research is needed to fully understand the various factors impacting youth health trajectories.

“In the United States, we tend to over-emphasize individual responsibility when it comes to health — and there’s a lot of blaming people for their poor health,” said Surachman. “But the reality is that health is much more complex than that. Some factors are simply beyond our control, such as the genetics and the inherited epigenetics we are born with. I hope this helps us give more grace and compassion to ourselves and our communities.”

Their paper was recently published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.

Original of this press release – here

Written by Eddie Gonzales  Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer