Following vegan diet might make you biologically younger

Eating a vegan diet may help you age more slowly, a new study claims.

Twins assigned to eat a vegan diet for eight weeks appeared to age biologically more slowly than their twin sibling assigned an omnivorous diet that included meat, eggs and dairy, results show.

The researchers "observed decreases in estimates of biological age -- known as epigenetic aging clocks -- in participants who ate a vegan diet, but not among those that ate an omnivorous diet," concluded the research team led by Varun Dwaraka , head of bioinformatics with TruDiagnostic, a leading health data company.

For the study, researchers recruited 21 pairs of adult identical twins.

One twin was assigned to be vegan and the other an omnivore. They ate prepared meals for the first four weeks of the study, while they ate meals they prepared themselves based on nutrition lessons for the second four weeks.

By the end of the study, researchers found that the vegan twins had aged less at the cellular level than the omnivorous twins.

They also observed decreases in the ages of the heart, hormone, liver and inflammatory and metabolic systems of participants who ate vegan.

The vegan twins also lost an average of more than four pounds more than their omnivorous twin during the study, researchers said. This was mainly due to differences in calorie content for the prepared meals eaten during the first four weeks of the study.

More research is needed to understand the relationship between diet and aging, as well as the long-term health effects of a vegan diet, the researchers concluded.

The new study was published Monday in the journal BMC Medicine .

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on vegan diets .

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