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 Older people in the UK who felt at least three years younger than
their chronological age were less likely to die over the next eight
years than those who felt equal to or older than their actual age,
researchers found.
“This relationship has been shown before, but not in such a large
scale study in which we were able to look at such a range of
possible explanations,” said coauthor Andrew Steptoe of the
epidemiology and public health department at University College
London. “We still don’t understand what the explanation really is.”
Using data from a previous study on aging, Steptoe and his coauthor
Isla Rippon analyzed more than 6,000 adults who were at least 52
years old.
In 2004 or 2005, researchers asked the participants how old they
felt.
More than two-thirds felt at least three years younger than their
real age, while a quarter felt their real age and less than five
percent felt more than a year older, according to the research
letter in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Following the group through March 2013, the authors found that about
14 percent of those who felt younger had died, compared to about 19
percent of those who felt their age and about a quarter of those who
felt older.
“The first thing we thought of is that people who feel older than
their chronological age are sicker, and that is why they are at
greater risk of dying,” Steptoe told Reuters Health by email.
To account for that, the authors measured pre-existing health
conditions including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke,
arthritis and other illnesses, which explained some of the link.
“But when we had taken these illnesses into account in our
statistical models, the relationship with perceived age remained
quite strong,” Steptoe said. “We also measured mobility problems,
lifestyle factors such as smoking, depression, and cognitive
function. But none of these explained the relationship we saw."
Self-perceived age was associated with death from heart disease, but
not from cancer, the authors found.
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In the second half of life, most people feel younger than they are,
averaging about nine years younger, Steptoe said.
“But there is a great deal of variation in these feelings,” he said.
“The study is important because it provides further evidence that
perceptions of aging can have real consequences for the health of
older individuals,” said Becca R. Levy, associate professor of
epidemiology and psychology at the Yale School of Public Health in
New Haven, Connecticut.
“The findings show the need for society, which often influences
these perceptions, to concentrate its efforts on enabling older
individuals to view the process of growing old in a more positive
light,” Levy, who was not part of the new study, told Reuters Health
by email.
People who feel older are less likely to go out and about, are
lonelier, are less mobile and are less physically active, Steptoe
noted.
People shouldn’t worry about how old they feel, he said.
“But it’s certainly something that we as medical researchers should
try and understand,” Steptoe said. “Perhaps the beliefs and feelings
that people have tell us something that our other measures of health
and wellbeing do not capture.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1emvR3n JAMA Internal Medicine, online
December 15, 2014.
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