New studies say that we now know something new about how pregnancy affects women.
Women lose about two years of biological age when they are pregnant, but they lose almost eight years of biological age when they give birth. This study from the Yale Child Study Center found that women went through a biological change that made them up to eight years younger about three months after giving birth.
“At three months postpartum, we saw a remarkably large decrease in biological age, by as much as eight years for some individuals,” said Kieran O’Donnell, an assistant professor and PhD candidate at Yale. “So while pregnancy increases biological age, there is a clear recovery in the postpartum.”
But it didn’t happen to all women the same way. Women with lower BMIs aged faster than women with higher BMIs. Also, women who breastfed seemed to age more slowly than guys.
“First, we don’t know if the postpartum recovery effect is important for the health of mothers in the short or long term, or if these effects build up over time.” Also, we don’t know if the drop in biological age after giving birth is just the body returning to its pre-pregnancy state or, even more intriguingly, if pregnancy may have a healing effect, he said.
According to experts, biological age can change, but formal age can’t. Cell Metabolism did a study that showed that mice’s biological age went down after giving birth. This led to the idea that it might be possible for people too.
It might look like “ageing,” but it might not be the same thing. It probably has something to do with supporting the baby.
