Having children may add 11 years to a woman’s biological age

Women who have given birth seem to have hallmarks of faster biological ageing than those that don’t – and the difference is equivalent to around 11 years.

That’s what Anna Pollack and her colleagues at George Mason University, Virginia, found when they looked at one measure of biological ageing. The team looked at the length of telomeres – chunks of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. These shorten with each cell division, and shrunken telomeres have been associated with a shorter lifespan, as well as a host of chronic diseases such…