A recent study carried out by the Stanford Prevention Research Center and TruDiagnostic has revealed the effects an eight-week vegan diet versus an omnivorous diet can have on the biological age of a human body.

The researchers aimed to know how a short vegan diet would affect a human age and health compared to a non-vegan diet.

The results were drawn after assessing the blood DNA methylation and epigenetic aging and how the diet affected them.

The minds behind the research divided participants in two groups. The omnivorous group was assigned to eat protein and dairy like meat, eggs and milk while the other group was told to avoid all animal products.

Those who strictly complied with the vegan diet for eight weeks showed a decrease in the biological ages of five organs including the human heart, hormonal, liver, inflammatory and metabolic systems.

As for the omnivorous diet group, an increase was apparent in their tryptophan which is known to elevate serotonin levels indirectly helping in regulating moods.

Director of Bioinformatics at TruDiagnostic Varun Dwaraka, PhD told Medical News Today that, “these results were surprising, even among interventions using epigenetic tests.”

He further added that in other studies involving the epigenetic clocks, changes typically occur after three to six months; however, during this study, they observed massive changes in just eight weeks.

Raghav Sehgal who is a PhD candidate in Computational biology and Bioinformatics at Yale University, scientific advisor at TruDiagnostic, and Director of Bioinformatics at the Healthy Longevity Clinic also shared his remarks on the newest epigenetic study while talking to Medical News Today.

“When we look at multiple vegan diets and green Mediterranean (similar to vegan diets except for having milk in them) the common thread we see is that the epigenetic scores for inflammation, metabolic and musculoskeletal aging are all improving. In other words, these diets may be specifically targeting inflammatory and metabolic aging pathways via epigenetics in the body and slowing them down,” Sehgal explained.

“At the end of the day, the exact mechanism of how these diets are providing benefits might turn out to be through multiple different pathways in the body but the fact that they are providing benefits is very clear to us,” Sehgal concluded.