A striking new study reveals that the education level of one’s grandparents can affect their biological aging. Researchers found that grandchildren of college-educated grandparents exhibit slower biological aging, providing fresh insights into the intergenerational transmission of health benefits.
While diet, exercise and regular medical checkups are well-known ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle, surprising new research suggests that whether your grandparents attended college may also play a role in your vitality. The groundbreaking study, led by Drexel University in collaboration with the University of California and the University of North Carolina, was recently published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
The researchers delved into data from three generations — examining the educational backgrounds of grandparents and parents, alongside health data from parents and their children. Their analysis uncovered a significant association between grandparents’ education levels and their grandchildren’s epigenetic-based “real” age, which reflects an individual’s health at the cellular level.
“The research community has established a link between how social factors, socioeconomic factors and childhood adversity can contribute to health trajectories,” Agus Surachman, an assistant professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University who led the study while he was a postdoctoral scholar University of California, San Francisco, said in a news release. “We know from animal studies that health is transmitted across several generations, from grandparents to grandchildren. But we now have robust human data that shows that not only do parents’ socioeconomic factors play a role in their children’s health, but that influence goes back an extra generation as well.”
This study builds on prior research showing that traumatic experiences, such as the Holocaust and Tutsi genocide, can affect the genetic expression among survivors and their descendants. This new research broadens that understanding by examining a general population, focusing on education as a key social stressor.
Epigenetic clocks, which use DNA methylation to predict an individual’s biological age, played a crucial role in this study. Higher education levels in grandparents were associated with slower biological aging in their grandchildren, as determined by five different epigenetic aging clocks. These clocks are innovative tools that provide insights into life expectancy and risks for chronic diseases, although the cost of such tests can be quite high.
The researchers recruited mothers for the NHLBI Growth and Health Study when they were children and followed up three decades later for the National Growth and Health Study. The team collected health and education data to determine the epigenetic age of their youngest children, aged 2 to 17. The study controlled for various factors, such as the age, sex and BMI of grandchildren, and characteristics like the mother’s health and family structure.
The findings indicated that the health of the mother partially explains the transmission effect between grandparent education and grandchild biological age, accounting for about 14.5% of the link.
“The link between a grandparent’s socioeconomic status and a grandchild’s epigenetic age is a remarkable finding, across generations,” added senior author Elissa Epel, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “This opens up a myriad of possible explanations and will need to be replicated. For now, we know that the mother’s poorer metabolic health is a partial mediator of this relationship.”
As the researchers continue to examine the predictors of health outcomes in this cohort, they emphasize the complexity of health determinants.
“In the United States, we tend to over-emphasize individual responsibility when it comes to health — and there’s a lot of blaming people for their poor health,” Surachman added. “But the reality is that health is much more complex than that. Some factors are simply beyond our control, such as the genetics and the inherited epigenetics we are born with. I hope this helps us give more grace and compassion to ourselves and our communities.”
This multi-generational study illuminates the profound and far-reaching effects of educational attainment, challenging societal perceptions of health and advocating for more investments in education and public health initiatives.