Mixed
An eight-week healthy vegan diet significantly reduces epigenetic age acceleration (PC GrimAge, PC PhenoAge, DunedinPACE) and systems-specific aging (Inflammation, Heart, Hormone, Liver, Metabolic) in adults, whereas a healthy omnivorous diet does not produce these epigenetic changes.
Adopting a healthy vegan diet for just eight weeks can significantly slow down biological aging markers, including inflammation, heart, and metabolic aging. This suggests that plant-based eating patterns can have rapid, measurable benefits on how your body ages at a molecular level, outperforming a healthy omnivorous diet in this specific context.
In the vegan group, we observed significant decreases in the following epigenetic age metrics: PC GrimAge (mean delta EAA = -0.3011, p = 0.033), PC PhenoAge (mean delta EAA = -0.7824, p = 0.014), and DunedinPACE (mean delta PACE = -0.0312, p = 0.00061) significantly decreased at 8 weeks relative to 0 weeks... Similarly, we observed significant reductions in the composite systems age metric age, which was corroborated by significant reductions of 5 out of 11 systems: Inflammation, Heart, Hormone, Liver, and Metabolic... In contrast, no epigenetic clock or telomere measure exhibited significant changes in the omnivorous cohort.
Why this rating
Randomized controlled trial with paired twins (n=42), but short duration (8 weeks) and preprint status without peer review.
Source
Unveiling the Epigenetic Impact of Vegan vs. Omnivorous Diets on Aging: Insights from the Twins Nutrition Study (TwiNS)
Varun B. Dwaraka et al. · medRxiv · 2023
DOI 10.1101/2023.12.26.23300543
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