The psyche affects the speed of aging – healing practice

How Psychological Factors Influence Aging

Everyone ages at a different rate. Apart from genetic factors, a person’s lifestyle is the main factor influencing him aging rate. According to a recent study, however, psyche a greater role in aging than previously thought. Happy people seem to age more slowly than people who suffer from loneliness or are often sad.

In a recent study, an international research team provides strong evidence that psychological factors play a key role in biological aging to contribute. While positive feelings like happiness, hope, and security slow aging, sadness and loneliness seem to speed aging. The results were published in the journal “aging“published.

What is biological age?

Chronological age, the number of years we live, provides only a rough estimate of how quickly we have aged. Biological age aims to provide a better representation of how quickly or slowly a person has actually aged.

So far some biomarkers related to aging, such as blood test results, gene expression levels, or DNA methylation levels. These aspects can be positively influenced, for example, by sufficient physical activity and a healthy diet.

The psyche influences aging

So far, however, little attention has been paid to this context Mental Health. A joint research group of Stanford Universitythe Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as Buck Institute for Research in Aging have just demonstrated the first model for calculating biological age that also takes psychological factors into account.

Because, as the researchers were able to show thanks to the data, they have an effect positive and negative feelingsthat prevail over a longer period of time, affect the rate of aging.

Physical factors alone are not enough

If psychological factors were not taken into account when determining life expectancy, but only known physical factors, there was an average discrepancy between the calculated and actual lifespan of the data 5.68 years old.

“Using data from the Chinese CHARLS database, we showed that the aging of the organism is not only determined by physical factors, but also, to some extent, by mental state and status. social.”comment the scientists involved.

Sadness and loneliness age faster

If, on the other hand, psychological factors were taken into account, the biological age could be represented more precisely. For example, the biological age of dissatisfied and lonely people in old age reaches on average up to 1.65 years older than happy people of the same age.

Other non-physical factors that influenced biological age were, for example Residential area and the Marital status a person.

Mental health matters for biological age

Overall, the working group comes to the conclusion that psychological components should not be ignored when determining biological age, since these significant impact on aging seems to have.

Moreover, the results confirm that social aspects and a healthy psyche have a strong influence on whether we are a a long and healthy life to be able to lead. (vb)