The Mediterranean diet would be a real secret of longevity: a new research   “clears it up” explaining why the Mediterranean diet affects genetics, delaying cellular aging. In practice it would act on telomeres, genetic chains that tend to spontaneously shorten with age, preventing and delaying this phenomenon. Since telomeres are linked to chromosomes, their shortening has long been linked to shorter life expectancies.

The research confirmed a thesis that had been circulating for some years and that linked the Mediterranean diet (healthy vegetable fats, fish proteins, more fruit and vegetables, whole grains: these are, remember, the cornerstones of the diet) to the length of telomeres and to the increased life expectancy . Out of nearly five thousand women studied, those who had eaten Mediterranean for years had shorter telomeres than the other candidates. How many more years of life correspond to a greater length of telomeres: the average estimated and resulting from the study (which also examined other parameters, such as smoking, physical activity and so on) is four and a half years of life in addition, that is, an average difference similar to that estimated between a (normal) smoker and a non-smoker.
In short: whoever makes the true Mediterranean diet gets the secret of long life!