Photo: Ella Olsson via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0, cropped.
Eight weeks of healthy vegan eating slowed the biological aging clocks of identical twins. In a new analysis of Stanford University's twin trial, the twins who went vegan showed significant decreases in epigenetic age acceleration, a measure of how fast the body is aging based on chemical tags on DNA, while their omnivore twins did not.
The paper, published in BMC Medicine, comes from the same trial led by Professor Christopher Gardner that last year showed the vegan twins' heart health improving. Lead author Varun Dwaraka of testing company TruDiagnostic and the Stanford team analyzed blood samples from 21 pairs of identical twins, one of each pair eating a healthy vegan diet and the other a healthy omnivorous one. As well as overall clocks, the vegan twins showed younger readings for five of eleven organ systems, including heart, liver, inflammation, hormone and metabolic measures. The vegan twins also ate fewer calories and lost about 2kg more, which outside experts noted may explain part of the result.
The authors conclude:
This study suggests that a short-term vegan diet is associated with epigenetic age benefits and reduced calorie intake.
It follows last year's headline result that the vegan twin had a healthier heart in just eight weeks, a trial that went on to become a Netflix hit. An earlier study also linked plant-based eating to slower biological aging.
Two months of plants, and the clock ticks a little slower.