Study finds engaging with the arts can slow biological aging : NPR

A study from University College London found that participating in artistic activities, such as painting or going to the theater, can help slow biological aging.

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If you want to give yourself the best chance of living a long life, you’ve probably heard the advice to eat well and exercise over and over again.

So here’s a new idea: stimulate your creative expression and participate more in the arts. A new study finds it could help increase longevity by slowing the rate of aging.

If you are a painter or pianist, you may have noticed how practicing art or music can reduce your stress levels. Creative expression can have a profound effect on our biology. Researchers at University College London had a hunch that the benefits went beyond that.

They analyzed survey data and blood samples from around 3,500 adults who participated in a long-term study in the United Kingdom, some of whom were very involved in the arts, as well as others who were very little engaged in the arts. Next, they used epigenetic clocks to assess the participants’ rate of aging.

“We found in this study that arts engagement was linked to a 4% slower rate of aging, meaning that people were biologically about a year younger if they were regularly engaged in the arts,” says researcher Daisy Fancourt. “This is actually the same reduction in biological aging as seen for physical activity,” she says.

Participants were asked a series of questions, ranging from their exercise habits to questions about more than 40 different artistic activities.

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The slower pace of aging has resisted both “doers” in the arts—people who dance, sing, or create art—as well as those who learn about art through going to concerts, the theater, or museums. The results are published in the journal Innovation in Aging.

“Honestly, this really surprises me,” says Steven Horvath, a geneticist and biostatistician at UCLA. He developed the Horvath Aging Clock, a tool used by researchers to assess a person’s biological age based on specific chemical changes to their DNA over time.

Measuring the rate of aging

The authors of the new study used seven epigenetic clocks, including a Horvath clock, each adding different layers of nuance in the interpretation of aging risk, morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have shown that healthy habits can slow epigenetic aging, and this new study adds a new perspective.

“I think this is a very rigorous study, and what’s particularly new to me is that artistic engagement can have comparable effects to physical activity,” says Horvath.

Horvath explains that a person’s chronological age is their actual age in years, based on the date on your birth certificate. But since people don’t age at the same rate, an epigenetic clock can measure your rate of aging, or your “biological” age.

“Overall, I think this study moves the field of the epigenetic clock to new frontiers,” he says, toward assessing the effects of leisure activities on aging.

How does an epigenetic clock work?

Epigenetic clocks are tests that analyze DNA methylation patterns. As we age, chemical tags called methyl groups cling to our DNA. The pattern of these tags gives researchers an indicator of biological age.

“You can use methylation to measure time in all cells containing DNA,” says Horvath.

Horvath spent years at UCLA studying how this molecular biomarker of aging works. In his research, he documented how methylation changes one of the four letters of DNA, namely C, which stands for cytosine.

“Some of these changes protect us,” he says, but others can have harmful consequences. He and his collaborators identified places in DNA where chemical changes are most strongly correlated with changes associated with aging. They found that the higher the proportion of methylated DNA in certain locations, the more a person’s biological age is accelerated.

“We spent more than 10 years trying to understand what factors speed up your epigenetic clock,” says Horvath. They found that smoking, poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle and “just about every lifestyle factor that is bad for your health” speeds up the clock.

Conversely, a diet rich in micronutrients from fruits and vegetables, a healthy weight and regular physical activity help to slow down methylation.

“A non-pharmacological intervention”

The University College London study suggests looking more closely at the health benefits of the arts.

The survey data included only a snapshot of participants’ artistic activity, as they were asked what types of artistic hobbies and cultural events they had participated in over the past 12 months. “It’s an intriguing observation, but it definitely needs to be replicated,” says Horvath.

And many questions remain. For example, whether a person who is not currently active in the arts might take up a new musical or artistic hobby in midlife and experience a slowdown in aging, and how often they would need to participate in it to keep things moving forward.

Northwestern University cardiologist Doug Vaughan says creative activities can be an antidote to stress. When people reduce their stress levels long-term, he says, it can also help alleviate inflammation, which is one mechanism by which the arts may be linked to slower aging.

“The arts, or being creative or appreciating the arts, is a non-pharmacological intervention,” Vaughan says, that people can enjoy. One of his new research projects will test the effects of a stress reduction program on epigenetic age. “The biology is pretty clear,” he says, emphasizing the negative health effects of chronic stress.

Vaughan says many of his patients tell him they want to find ways to stay healthy without a prescription. So he says when something can be fun and also good for our health, it’s a win-win.