(LifeSiteNews) — Researchers have replicated the results of a 2023 study showing that pregnancy increases women’s “biological age” but also discovered a “postpartum recovery effect… indicating a pronounced reversal of biological aging” after a woman has given birth.
The National Institute on Aging says biological age, as opposed to chronological age, “means the true age that our cells, tissues, and organ systems appear to be, based on biochemistry.”
Consistent with the 2023 findings, “We found a significant positive association between the stage of pregnancy and biological age,” the researchers, who came from Yale School of Medicine, University of California at Irvine, and Germany, wrote. “We also observed a statistically significant ‘reversal’ of biological aging across all epigenetic biomarkers from the late pregnancy to the approximately 3-month postpartum time point.”
They explained:
Using an extended panel of epigenetic biomarkers, our findings replicate those reported by Poganik and colleagues to show that the state and stage of pregnancy are positively associated with biological aging. We now also provide evidence of a postpartum recovery effect. We note that the magnitude of the decrease in maternal biological age from the pregnant to non-pregnant state was about 2 to 3 times more than the increase in biological age from early to late pregnancy, indicating a pronounced reversal of biological aging. In addition, we identify maternal pre-pregnancy BMI and breastfeeding as two factors that may increase or decrease maternal biological aging in the postpartum respectively.
More research is needed to “determine whether the reversal of maternal biological age we observed at 3 months postpartum is maintained over time and whether such effects accumulate over successive pregnancies.”
Kieran J. O’Donnell of Yale told MedicalXpress.com, “At three months’ postpartum, we saw a remarkably large decrease in biological age, by as much as eight years for some individuals, so while pregnancy increases biological age there is a clear (and pronounced) recovery in the postpartum.”
The fact that after delivery the “aging” effect pregnancy has on women’s cells can significantly reverse is one of many sublime realities about the mother-child relationship. DNA from unborn babies stays in their mothers’ bodies long after birth and may offer mothers increased resistance to certain diseases. And a mother’s body increases or decreases in temperature to help a newborn who is placed on her, skin to skin, maintain a healthy body temperature.