We all know that eating well, exercising and attending regular doctor appointments can support a long, healthy life — but some factors might be outside our control, such as whether you had a grandparent who went to college.

Researchers in the Dana and David Dornsife School of Public Health, the University of California and the University of North Carolina found that grandchildren of college-educated grandparents showed slower biological aging (i.e., younger biological age relative to chronological age) than those whose grandparents did not graduate from college based on their epigenetic-based “real” age, which considers the age of cells and proteins linked to DNA in the body.

If your grandparents went to college, it may slow down biological aging for you and
your DNA.

In the study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, they studied data across three generations: education of parents and grandparents plus health data from parents and their children. They found a statistically significant association between grandparents’ education level and aging in their grandchildren.

Previous studies in this area found that exposure to traumatic experiences — such as the Holocaust or Tutsi genocide — can influence genes among survivors and their children. The data in this study fills an important gap by
examining a general population and a common crude index of social stress exposures: education level.

“In the United States, we tend to overemphasize individual responsibility when it comes to health — and there’s a lot of blaming people for their poor health,” says lead author Agus Surachman, an assistant professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health. “But the reality is that health is much more complex than that. Some factors are simply beyond our control, such as the genetics and the inherited epigenetics we are born with. I hope this helps us give more grace and compassion to ourselves and our communities.”