- Medical history, lifestyle, and genetics all play a role in how quickly a person ages.
- Researchers recently discovered that a person’s mental health is also a factor in their risk of accelerated aging.
- According to the researchers, certain psychological problems, such as hopelessness, unhappiness and loneliness, increase a person’s biological age more than smoking.
Aging is a natural life process that everyone experiences.
However, the process is not always the same for everyone. Factors like your medical history, lifestyle, and genetics can all play a role in what happens to your mind and body as you age.
For example, previous research shows of smoking, dietY stress accelerate biological aging.
Now, researchers at Deep Longevity Limited in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China, have found evidence suggesting that the mental health it affects aging as well as physical health.
The researchers found that when certain psychological states are combined, a person’s biological age can increase more than smoking.
This study was recently published in the journal Aging.
According to the lead author of the study fedor galkinDirector of Scientific Business Development at Deep Longevity Limited in Hong Kong, the main objective of this study was to show that people can improve their physical health by focusing on their mental health.
“To be more specific, low-level aging processes can be affected by your emotional state,” Galkin said. Today’s medical news.
Galkin said the impact of psychology on a person’s biological age is an understudied topic because of scientific reductionism.
“In the (20th) century, scientific reductionism was installed in practically all fields of science,” he explained. “He did it in biology: the organism consists of cells Y molecules, so if we understand the molecules, we can understand the organism. This has narrowed our vision in many ways. One such case is the study of aging. Aging is a multifaceted phenomenon with social and (economic) components, but in biology it is common to study it in a much narrower sense.”
Galkin said there are studies linking the psychology of aging to its molecular manifestations, but not that many.
“We know childhood trauma o Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) speed up epigenetic aging(like psychological stress. Since there is a connection, we hypothesize that the (low-level) physiological rhythm of aging can be manipulated by (high-level) psychological therapies. That’s why we build FuturSelf.AIto provide a backbone for our new hybrid anti-aging approach.”
– Fedor Galkin, lead author of the study
To study the impact of mental health on aging, Galkin and his team developed a deep learning aging clock.
A aging clock is a statistical model that measures a person’s biological age rather than chronological age. To do this, an aging clock uses blood, genetic, and DNA tests to measure a person’s rate of biological aging.
The researchers used the aging clock they developed to measure the effect of physical and mental health factors on aging in nearly 12,000 Chinese adults from the CHARLS data set.
Smoking represented the main physical factor.
Mental health concerns included depression, sleeping problems, loneliness, feeling unhappy and rarely hopeful. In addition, the researchers included a person’s social status: married, widowed, and/or living in a rural area.
Analyzing the data, the researchers found that all of the factors included in the analysis had a significant impact on the rate of aging. The three largest impacts came from smoking (increased rate of aging by 1.25 years), being currently married (decreased rate of aging by 0.59 years), and sleep problems (increased rate of aging by 0.44 years ).
The researchers also found that, when combined, the eight psychological variables included in their study accelerated a person’s aging by 1.65 years, a higher rate than smoking.
Galkin said this study draws attention to the overlooked benefits of maintaining good mental health.
“Quite often, mental health therapies are thought of as just making you ‘feel good,’ but according to our study, they can tangibly extend your life,” Galkin said.
“If brought to the attention of (governments) or large organizations with millions of clients, using studies like ours to create new policies can lead to the addition of eons of human life years to the global economy. I hope that this new line of reasoning, deeply elaborated by Sinclair in his (to study) will persuade such large entities to pay more attention to the fields of mental health and longevity.”
Today’s medical news also discussed this study with Dr Stella Panos, a neuropsychologist and director of neuropsychology at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, who was not involved in this study. He said there are multiple reasons why a person’s mental health could affect their rate of aging.
“Mental health problems like depression (and) anxiety it can affect lifestyle,” explained Dr. Panos.
“People may be a bit more sedentary, not paying attention to health factors the way they would if they weren’t depressed or anxious. If someone is stressed, that can lead to poor health outcomes in general, just because of their biology, and that increases [the] risk of general health conditions later in life.
“The other possibility would be the other way around. For [many] patients who have neurological diseases or other chronic diseases, there are high rates of depression, anxiety and those kinds of mental health problems. We used to think of it as a response to the condition, like a situational response, but there’s actually a lot of research that suggests there’s a biological component. For example, when people have a head injury One of the most common factors is depression. And they’ve seen this in several studies where they’ve shown there’s more likely to be a biological component as well.”
– Dr. Stella Panos, neuropsychologist
If a person is experiencing mental health problems, such as feeling unhappy, lonely, or depressed, Dr. Panos suggests that they talk to others about it, including their doctor and mental health professional.
“I think it should be an open conversation,” he explained. “I think this is a period of time where people are more comfortable talking about mental health issues.”
Dr. Panos recommended setting small goals when looking to make mental health changes. “When people feel like this, it’s very difficult to make a change, it can feel really overwhelming,” he explained.
“I always tell people (to) make a very small goal, one that you feel reasonable you can do, and then you can increase it over time. So just get to a friend and then go from there.”
Some practical tips for taking care of your mental health include:
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