For those who feel younger than their biological age, here's some good news for you. A study conducted by a pair of researchers from London suggests that people who feel "young at heart" are more likely to live longer.
For the new research published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Dec. 15, Isla Rippon and Andrew Steptoe, both from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University College London, studied the association between self-perceived age and mortality by examining the data taken from a study on aging that involved over 6,400 men and women.
Of the participants, 69.6 percent were three years or more younger than their biological age while 25.6 percent said that they felt their actual age. Nearly 5 percent of the participants, on the other hand, felt older than their true age.
The researchers found that the incidence of death in the participants who felt younger than their age was lower compared with their counterparts who felt their age or older over the course of eight years. During this follow-up period, 24.6 per percent of the participants who felt they were older than their age died. The incidence was 18.5 percent in individuals who felt their age but only 14.3 percent in the participants who felt younger.
While self-perceived age appeared to have a strong impact on a person's likelihood of dying from heart disease, however, the study showed that it made no difference when it comes to a person's risks of dying from cancer.
"We do know that anxiety and poor management of stress can put people at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, while the link between those emotions and cancer is much weaker," said James Maddux, from George Mason University in Virginia. "It's not a surprise to me that they found this link for cardiovascular disease but not for cancer."
The researchers were also aware that other factors such as disabilities and overall health could also play a role in a person's likelihood for death but even after adjusting for these factors, Rippon and Steptoe still noticed that people who felt old had 41 percent increased mortality risks compared with those who felt younger.
The researchers said it could be a good thing for doctors to know about their older patients' self-perceived age.
"Self-perceived age has the potential to change, so interventions may be possible," the researchers wrote. "Individuals who feel older than their actual age could be targeted with health messages promoting positive health behaviors and attitudes toward ageing."
