A large part of our business is related to helping people who are overweight and obese achieve healthy body weights, so we’re always keeping abreast of the latest scientific research about these topics. And though we do feature upbeat information from studies that link our nutrition approach to weight-loss and increased health and wellbeing, we also need to feature the bad news, which is the often alarming results of research on obesity.

The latest bad news about obesity is that it’s now been linked to accelerated aging. Aging, the inevitable process that most of us accept unless we’re Hollywood stars (in which case we’ll consider anything, no matter how drastic, to stop it), is something we all want to avoid. As it turns out, achieving a healthy body weight helps you in this respect.

The research revolves around what are called “telomeres”, which are caps on the end of chromosomes in cells. Every time one of your cells divides, this cap gets smaller, and when the telomere is gone, the cell dies. The older you get, the more cell divisions have taken place in your body, which leads to increasing numbers of cells dying - in other words, aging.

It turns out that the telomeres of people who are obese are significantly shorter than those of people who are lean. In fact, “the difference in telomere length between being lean and being obese corresponds to 8.8 years of aging”, according to Dr. Tim Spector in The Lancet medical journal.

The good news is that unlike many other medical conditions, being obese or overweight can be corrected, as the people who’ve experienced our Personalized Nutrition Programs can tell you!

Read a news article on the report here.