The strong correlation of education with telomere health | Elissa Epel
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A wide variety of lifestyle and demographic factors, including socioeconomic status, race, sex, and education, influence telomere length and, ultimately, lifespan. These factors shape telomere length at birth and have the potential to create a healthy – or unhealthy – trajectory of aging. One of the most influential factors is education level, which is correlated with longer telomere length. In this clip, Dr. Elissa Epel describes how education affected the telomere length of the babies of low-income women.
Elissa: Yeah, the education...the SES effect is interesting. It's there, inconsistently, small effect. What shows up the most is education and I think that... we even found...
Rhonda: So the more educated, the longer the telomeres or?
Elissa: Yes, exactly, positive correlation. My colleague, Janet Wojcicki, found that in a low-income sample of Hispanic women, they're all pregnant, those who graduated high school had babies with longer telomeres in their cord blood. But those who did not graduate high school had babies with shorter telomere length. So we couldn't figure out anything that could explain, the covariance, you know, everything we could and they are all low income. So the education is probably filtering in so many different ways of promoting better health.
Rhonda: You’re making me feel good about my Ph.D.
Distinctive structures comprised of short, repetitive sequences of DNA located on the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres form a protective “cap” – a sort of disposable buffer that gradually shortens with age – that prevents chromosomes from losing genes or sticking to other chromosomes during cell division. When the telomeres on a cell’s chromosomes get too short, the chromosome reaches a “critical length,” and the cell stops dividing (senescence) or dies (apoptosis). Telomeres are replenished by the enzyme telomerase, a reverse transcriptase.
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