A new study involving 5,834 adults shows that drinking 1 percent rather than 2 percent milk increases your longevity by 4.5 years. The research was carried out by Brigham Young University exercise science professor Larry Tucker, Ph.D.
Out of all the participating adults in the study, just under a third reported consuming whole milk. Another 30 percent reported consuming 2 percent milk, 10 percent consumed the 1 percent milk and 17 percent drank non-fat milk. 13 percent of the adults that participated indicated that they did not consume cow milk.
Tucker said he was surprised by the findings and the consequences the choice in what type of milk one consumed posed on their longevity. His research involved investigating the effect of consumption of both milk types and the length of the telomere.
Telomere act as the biological clock of the human body and very highly correlated with the human aging process. They are nucleotide endcaps of human chromosomes. They lose a part of their endcaps each time they replicate, thereby getting shorter for older people.
The study was able to determine that for people who consumed high-fat milk, they had smaller telomeres as compared to their counterparts. This showed the correlation between milk intake and the length of telomere in their bodies.
Effects of milk fat on longevity
The study showed that for every one percent increase in milk fat, the telomeres decreased by 69 base pairs. This translated to a decrease in longevity of about 4.5 years for those who consumed higher milk fat concentration.
Tucker said, “If someone asked me to put together a presentation on the value of drinking milk, I could put together a 1-hour presentation that would knock your socks off. You’d think, ‘Whoa, everybody should be drinking more milk.’ If someone said to do the opposite, I could also do that. At the very least, the findings of this study are definitely worth pondering. Maybe there’s something here that requires a little more attention.”
He insisted that the study showed how to milk fat affects the aging process in humans. The study was also able to show by how much does the increase in fat milk the humans aged.
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