2023-06-29 05:41:00
Parks and green spaces help reduce heat and promote biodiversity in the city, but also help slow cell aging, according to a study. People living near islands of greenery are on average 2.5 years younger biologically than others.
People living near islands of greenery are on average 2.5 years younger biologically than others.
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“Living near more greenery can help you look younger than your true age,” Kyeezu Kim, lead author of the study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, told AFP. Ms. is a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University School of Medicine.
“We believe our findings have important implications for urban planning in expanding green infrastructure, promoting public health, and reducing health disparities,” she added.
A link had already been established between exposure to green spaces and better cardiovascular health as well as lower mortality rates. The researchers believed that physical activity and social interactions related to park attendance played a role in this finding. But whether the parks themselves slow cell aging was unclear.
Differences
The team in charge of the study published on Wednesday therefore examined the chemical modifications of DNA, or “methylation”. She followed more than 900 people from four American cities (Birmingham, Chicago, Minneapolis and Oakland) over 20 years, from 1986 to 2006.
Using satellite images, the team measured the distance between the addresses of the participants and the parks and studied blood samples taken at the fifteenth and then at the twentieth year of the study to determine their biological age.
The researchers then built scientific models to evaluate the results and took into account variables that may have affected them such as education, income, smoking or not.
They found that people whose homes were surrounded by 30% greenery within a three-mile radius were on average biologically 2.5 years younger than those whose homes were surrounded by 20% greenery.
But the benefits were not the same for everyone. Blacks living near green spaces were only a year younger than their age, while whites were three years younger.
“Other factors such as stress, the quality of surrounding green spaces and other social factors can affect the magnitude of benefits from green spaces in terms of biological age,” said Kyeezu Kim, adding that these disparities should make the difference. subject of further research.
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