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According to research Led by Calen Ryan and Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern and Dan Eisenberg at the University of Washington, multiple pregnancies might make women’s cells age more quickly- women with many children tend to show signs of accelerated aging.
They discovered this by looking at two separate markers of cellular aging-telomere length and epigenetic age in hundreds of young women with different reproductive histories in the Philippines. Telomere length and epigenetic age are cellular markers that independently predict mortality, and both appeared ‘older’ in women who had more pregnancies in their reproductive histories.
Cellular aging was accelerated between 1 and 2 years for each additional pregnancy but women who were currently pregnant had cells that looked younger not older than predicted. A woman’s biological age was higher with each child that she had, if a woman was pregnant when the measurements were taken, her epigenetic age and telomeres, looked younger than predicted for her chronological age.
Pregnancy makes women look temporarily young, but there appears to be some lasting, cumulative relationship between the number of pregnancies and more accelerated biological age. Women who have many children tend to have slightly shorter lives and prone to different diseases than those who don’t. Having four or five children can increase the risk of certain diseases and shorten lifespan because cellular changes during pregnancy is related to adaptive changes in the mother’s immune system.