AsianScientist (Mar. 1, 2016) – Impatience is not just a personality trait, as an international team of researchers have found—it may also be an indication of cellular aging, even in youth. Their first-of-its-kind study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that female undergraduates who were identified as being impatient had shorter telomeres.
Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences that protect the ends of human chromosomes and shorten each time a cell divides. Shorter telomeres have been linked to aging, lifestyle factors such as smoking and lack of exercise, and greater risk of chronic disease.
“Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is an emerging marker of aging at the cellular level, but little is known regarding its link with poor decision-making that often entails being overly impatient,” co-first authors Dr. Yim Onn-Siong from the National University of Singapore and Dr. Xing Zhang from the Singapore-ETH Center, together with colleagues from Singapore, the US and Russia, wrote in their paper.
The present study, which involved over 1,100 Chinese university students, measured impatience and risk attitude, both important determinants of decision-making. They used a monetary rewards system to demonstrate the concept of delayed discounting. Real-life decisions, such as the propensity to take out a savings plan, or avoid over-eating for health reasons, are examples of delayed discounting.
Participants were offered either $100 the next day, or $101 in a month’s time. The latter amount was increased incrementally to $128 in a series of steps, with participants choosing between either option each time. This way, the research team could determine the minimum acceptable amount for which the participants were willing to delay the reward.
“How much money does it require for a person to be more patient? Observing this switching point enables a crisp measure of the individual differences in a seemingly complex trait—impatience,” corresponding authors Professor Chew Soo Hong and Professor Richard Ebstein from NUS told Asian Scientist Magazine.
Furthermore, to measure the proneness to taking risks, or risk attitude, the research team conducted an experiment mimicking the nature of investing in the stock market.
Findings revealed that there was a significant link between impatience and shorter telomere length; this correlation was robust even after controlling for health-related variables and risk attitude. Additionally, the female participants turned out to be more impatient than the males.
“Our study shows that young, impatient Chinese women exhibit signs of more rapid aging at the cellular level,” they said.
Interestingly, the researchers also found that the ‘right’ genes could temper the relationship between impatient behavior and telomere length. They found that impatient women with particular variants of the oxytocin receptor and estrogen receptor genes had longer telomeres. This suggests that even an undesirable trait such as impatience can, in part, be tempered by protective genes.
In future, the team plans to conduct a followup study bringing in a form of intervention known as mindfulness-based stress reduction to enhance subjects’ patience. Through this, they hope to investigate the extent to which changes in the degree of patience demonstrated by subjects predict changes in telomere length, and/or telomerase activity, following the intervention.
“This will enable us to address the question of causality to some extent. If changes in patience precede changes in telomere length, the findings would be pointing to the idea that enhanced patience leads to better conserved telomere length,” they said.
The article can be found at: Yim et al. (2016) Delay Discounting, Genetic Sensitivity, and Leukocyte Telomere Length.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
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