history at a glance
- A new study from American and Chinese researchers shows that a person’s mental health may play a role in how quickly someone ages.
- The study found that feelings of sadness and loneliness alone could increase a person’s biological age by up to 1.65 years.
- The study also looked at how other health and environmental factors affected the accelerated aging process. The researchers found that smoking could add up to 1.25 years to a person’s biological age.
Poor mental health can accelerate a person’s aging process more than smoking or certain illnesses, according to a new study
Human beings have two different ages. There is chronological age, which measures how long a person has been on Earth, and then there is biological age, which refers to how old a person appears.
Many lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and psychological state can affect a person’s biological age.
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A new study from Deep Longevity, a Hong Kong-based longevity company, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Stanford University found that feelings that cause poor mental health, such as sadness, loneliness, and general unhappiness, they add an additional 1.65 years to a person’s biological age.
Meanwhile, smoking can add up to 1.25 years and restless sleep can add 0.44 years to a person’s biological age, according to the study.
As part of the study, the researchers said they created a new “aging clock” based on data from 4,846 Chinese adults in 2015 as part of the China longitudinal study of health and retirement.
The data included 16 blood biomarkers such as cholesterol and glucose levels, as well as other health information such as blood pressure, body mass index, lung function and gender.
The researchers compared the chronological ages of the CHARLS participants with the ages predicted by their new “aging clock.” The results found that the new age was approximately 5.6 years older than the actual ages of the CHARLS participants.
The team also found that smokers and those with a history of stroke, liver or lung disease were predicted to be older than the remaining 4,451 healthy adults in the cohort.
Other environmental factors such as marital status, rural setting and access to health care affected biological age, the study also found.
