Taking a little stress can be good for cells as it boosts resilience to aging, says study

Everybody has a certain limit of stress in their own way. If you know how to take stress smartly, it has got a mighty benefit for your betterment of health. A study has explicitly reveals that taking a little stress can be good for cells as it boosts resilience, protects aging cells and delay the risk of disease.

Daily lives for every individual does not come without stress. With gradual technical advancements, human lives are falling prey to the evil that eats up the peace and happiness day by day.

Taking more stress may not be good as it can hamper one's health in the long run. Nevertheless, a study reveals that taking little stress can be good for the cells as it helps to boost resilience, protects aging cells.

These findings might help researchers to better understand how the molecular mechanisms actually bring forth age-related degenerative diseases and aging of cells.

"Our findings offer us a strategy for looking at aging in humans and how we might prevent or stabilize against cell decline as we age," said Richard I.Morimoto, Professor at the Northwestern University.

"Our goal is not trying to find ways to make people live longer but rather to increase health at the cellular and molecular levels so that a person's span of good health matches their lifespan," said Morimoto.

The study was published in the journal Cell Reports. The team of researcher took a transparent roundworm C and screened. They found approximately 22,000 genes in it. The researchers found that signals from mildly stressed mitochondria- the cellular source of energy- might help prevent the failure of protein –folding control (proteostasis) machinery that comes with age.

However, in turn, these dominated the accumulation of damaged proteins that can occur in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

"People have always known that prolonged mitochondrial stress can be deleterious. But we discovered that when you stress mitochondrial just a little, the mitochondrial stress signal is actually interpreted by the cell and animals as a survival strategy," said Morimoto.
"It makes the animals completely stress-resistant and doubles their lifespan. It's like magic," he further added.

C elegan found in roundworms has a biochemical environment and cellular properties like that of the human. Whatsoever properties exhibited in the transparent roundworm may affect the humans and their quality of life, said researchers.

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