The UV rays from sun exposure can damage telomeres.6 Petra Boukamp, a telomere skin researcher from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, and her colleagues have compared skin from a sun-exposed site—the neck—to a sun-protected site—the buttocks. The outer cells on the neck showed some telomere attrition from the sun, whereas the protected buttock cells showed almost no telomere attrition with aging! Skin cells, when protected from the sun, can withstand aging for a long time.
