Feeling young at heart may help you live longer

We’re all getting older, it’s a condition that no one escapes from. However, in the immortal words of Mark Twain.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Mark Twain

As it turns out Twain might have been onto something and that youthful feeling may pay off big time. Recent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that older people who felt three or more years younger than their actual (chronological) age had a lower death rate compared with those who felt their age or those who felt more than one year older than their actual age.

You’re as young as you feel

Two researchers at the University College London looked at the responses of about 6,500 men and women who answered the question, “how old do you feel you are?” The respondents, who were all 52 years and older, answered accordingly:

Now here’s the interesting part… 8 years after the study participants answered the age question, researches determined which ones were still alive. Here are the results…

So, is how you feel more important than how old you actually are?

Did this youthful feeling keep people alive? There was no association between self-perceived age and cancer mortality. But they did find that the relationship between self-perceived age and cardiovascular death was strong. They speculated that feeling younger lead to better health habits.

Dr Ronald Siegel assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School said, “there are several ways that feeling younger psychologically would lead to better health, the prime example being exercise.” Good health is associated with 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity each week such as resistance training, Pilates, cycling or interval training.

When people see themselves as old, they’re more likely to abandon physical challenges which feel difficult, such as ‘I don’t think I can hike or ski anymore, I’m an old man.’ When people feel younger psychologically, even if physical exercise is challenging, they’re more likely to pursue it, believing no pain no gain,

Dr Ronald Siegel

Grow younger each day

Two researchers at the University College London looked at the responses of about 6,500 men and women who answered the question, “how old do you feel you are?” The respondents, who were all 52 years and older, answered accordingly:

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