Feelings of depression and loneliness can age us faster than smoking.
These days, what doesn’t expedite the aging process? According to new research depression, unhappiness and loneliness can speed it up. The research shows that everyone has a chronological age, but your “biological age” is based on how your body and its functions age over time, and it’s connected to your lifestyle and genetic makeup, The Guardian reports.
Researchers say that one of the biggest factors in what ages us is our psychological health. “Your body and soul are connected – this is our main message,” says the co-author of the study, Fedor Galkin.
The study included 4,846 adults, and the experiment was conducted back in 2015. Researchers at Deep Longevity, Stanford University, based their “aging clock” around 16 blood biomarkers, including the participant’s sex, blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index. That data was then compared to the chronological age of individuals.
While liver disease, lung conditions and other health disease-related conditions added no more than 18 months for the average aging pace, psychological disruptions did.
“We demonstrate that psychological factors, such as feeling unhappy or being lonely, add up to 1.65 years to one’s biological age,” said Galkin. “Taking care of your psychological health is the greatest contributor that you can have to slowing down your pace of ageing,” he said.
