--- title: Living a Healthy Life Helps You Age Slower description: There's more evidence for eating well, sleeping, and exercising canonical: https://time.com/3051679/3-simple-lifestyle-habits-that-may-slow-aging/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-29T15:43:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T09:23:40.973Z article:section: Health og:title: Living a Healthy Life Helps You Age Slower og:description: There's more evidence for eating well, sleeping, and exercising og:url: https://time.com/3051679/3-simple-lifestyle-habits-that-may-slow-aging/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Living a Healthy Life Helps You Age Slower twitter:description: There's more evidence for eating well, sleeping, and exercising twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 3 Simple Lifestyle Habits That May Slow Aging > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jul 29, 2014 3:43 PM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jul 29, 2014 3:43 PM UTC Stress makes our bodies age faster, but thankfully we can combat that with healthy eating and exercise, a new study says. When cells age, telomeres—tips at the end of chromosomes—shorten. Telomeres help regulate the aging of cells, and their length has been used to determine the body’s current state of health. Things like stress and lifestyle behaviors can influence their length, as [compelling earlier research has shown](http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/16/eat-better-and-stress-less-itll-make-your-cells-and-maybe-you-live-longer/). In the new study, University of California, San Francisco, researchers looked at 239 post-menopausal women for a year and found that for every major life stressor they experienced during the year, there was a significant shortening in their telomere length. That’s not great news, but the researchers also discovered that the women who ate a healthy diet, exercised and slept well had less shortening of their telomeres. It could be that the women’s healthy habits actually protect them from cellular aging, even in the face of life’s stresses. The study, which is published in the journal _Molecular Psychiatry_, is observational, which means the researchers cannot say with certainty that it was these healthy lifestyles alone that offered them protective benefits. But at the very least, it shows once again that doing our best to eat well, sleep, and exercise can give us an edge. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3051679/3-simple-lifestyle-habits-that-may-slow-aging/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3051679/3-simple-lifestyle-habits-that-may-slow-aging/"},"headline":"3 Simple Lifestyle Habits That May Slow Aging","datePublished":"2014-07-29T15:43:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:23:40.973Z","description":"There's more evidence for eating well, sleeping, and exercising","url":"https://time.com/3051679/3-simple-lifestyle-habits-that-may-slow-aging/","keywords":["Aging","Stress","Sleep","Healthy Eating"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/aging/","name":"Aging"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3051679/3-simple-lifestyle-habits-that-may-slow-aging/","name":"3 Simple Lifestyle Habits That May Slow Aging"}}]}] ```