Lifestyle: Drinking Alcohol Makes People Age Faster, Scientists Say

A team of scientists out of Japan has put a damper on a lot of summer parties with a new report that says that the more people drink, the faster they age on a cellular level. 

According to Science Daily, scientists in Japan compared alcoholic patients with non-alcoholic patients of the same ages and assessed their drinking histories and lifestyle habits and compared DNA samples. Scientists say the DNA showed the of heavy-drinking patients had shorter telomeres than those of patients of the same ages who were not heavy drinkers. 

"Telomeres, the protein caps on the ends of human chromosomes, are markers of aging and overall health," said Dr. Naruhisa Yamaki from the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine. 

Telomeres shorten naturally with age, and telomere shortening is associated with a host of age-related medical problems like diabetes, cancer, dementia, and heart disease. That’s why it was concerning for researchers to note that heavy-drinking patients had shorter telomeres. 

“Our study showed that alcoholic patients have a shortened telomere length, which means that heavy drinking causes biological ageing at a cellular level,” Yamaki explained.