Dec 03, 2014 06:21 PM EST By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Eating a Mediterranean diet could help you live longer, according to a recent study.

The Mediterranean diet, which is characterized by a high intake of vegetables, fruits, nuts,  grains, olive oil and fish,  has been associated with longer telomere length -- an established marker of slower aging. Shorter telomeres are thus associated with lower life expectancy and greater risk of age-related diseases.

Given that fruits, vegetables, and nuts -- key components of the Mediterranean diet -- have well known antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, a team of US researchers, led by Immaculata De Vivo of Harvard Medical School, set out to examine whether adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with longer telomere length.

"To our knowledge, this is the largest population-based study specifically addressing the association between Mediterranean diet adherence and telomere length in healthy, middle-aged women," researchers wrote in the study. "Our results further support the benefits of adherence to the Mediterranean diet for promoting health and longevity."

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 4,600 healthy middle-aged women from the Nurses' Health Study -- an ongoing study tracking the health of more than 120,000 U.S. nurses since 1976. Participants completed detailed food questionnaires and had a blood test to measure telomere length.

After adjusting for other potentially influential factors, the results show that greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet was significantly associated with longer telomeres. Each one point change in diet score corresponded on average to 1.5 years of telomere aging.

However, none of the individual dietary components was associated with telomere length, underlining the importance of examining dietary patterns in relation to health, not just separate dietary factors such as intake of whole grains, say the authors.

Lifestyle factors, such as obesity, cigarette smoking, and consumption of sugar sweetened drinks, have all been linked to people having shorter telomeres than typically occur in people of a similar age. Oxidative stress and inflammation have also been shown to speed up telomere shortening.

The findings are detailed in the BMJ. 

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