Depression and Loneliness Can Age Us Faster Than Smoking, Study Finds

Have you ever thought that feeling upset, depressed, or lonely could make you an old man despite being young?

Yes, this is true, as a recent study has suggested that feeling unhappy and low-spirited speeds up the aging processes more than smoking or even certain diseases.

Aging is a natural life process that everyone will go through, but it is not always the same for all people. Factors like the person's medical history, genetics, and psychological situation, can play an important role in what happens to his mind and body as that person gets older.

 

You are Older than You Think

Everyone agrees that being lonely can be bad for people's psychological health, but a new study has recently found that depression and loneliness may also be affecting our physical health and accelerating the body's aging process.

Researchers said feeling gloomy and desperate increases people's biological age even more than regular smoking or alcohol.

The conclusions came after using a deep-learning "aging clock" to test blood and biometric data from nearly 12,000 adults in China.

The researchers, who led the study supervised by the biotechnology company Deep Longevity, said they were surprised to see "how much of an impact psychological factors could have on aging, compared to established physical factors such as a smoking habit," according to Euronews.

In addition to people's age, which is based on their date of birth and called "chronological age," everyone has what is known as a "biological age," which is based on the aging of the body's functions, influenced by genetics, lifestyle, and other factors.

Many studies have previously suggested that the higher the biological age, the higher the risk of death.

Now, a digital model of aging has been created, revealing the importance of psychological health.

"Your body and soul are connected—this is our main message," said Fedor Galkin, a co-author of the study and lead scientist at the Hong Kong startup Deep Longevity.

Researchers demonstrate that "psychological factors, such as feeling unhappy or being lonely, add up to 1.65 years to one's biological age," they write.

Galkin said the figure is an estimate, but the psychological state is very important in how fast we age.

"Taking care of your psychological health is the greatest contributor to slowing down your pace of aging," he said.

 

What Is an Aging Clock?

A person's true age reveals little about his health and general physical functioning, but there is another assessment which is his biological age measured by the aging clock. What does it mean?

The Medical News Today defines an aging clock as "a statistical model that measures biological age, rather than chronological age - which is how old a person actually is based on their date of birth."

"By looking for a combination of 16 blood biomarkers, seven biometric parameters, and the biological sex of the participant, the clock created an age prediction."

According to Galkin: "An aging clock is a digital model of aging trained on thousands of human samples."

"It learns to identify the footprints of aging by inspecting biomarker profiles annotated with chronological age. Then, it can estimate a person's age by looking at their biomarkers," he said.

"It turns out that if a person is recognised by this model as an old person, their molecular aging processes are accelerated. This property can be used to prevent the onset of aging-related diseases or find ways to slow down aging."

The researchers confirmed that blood pressure, cystatin C (a protein that signals kidney health), body mass index (BMI), and spirometry (lung capacity) were the most important predictors of age.

After analyzing the data of 11,914 Chinese adults, the clock determined "that smoking added around 1.25 years of aging."

However, negative feelings of loneliness, depression, hopelessness, unhappiness, and poor sleep, could add 1.65 years of aging.

 

The Link Between Physical and Mental Health

The main purpose of this recent study was to show people "can improve their physical health by targeting their mental health," according to Galkin.

He told Medical News Today that "to be more specific, low-level aging processes can be affected by your emotional state."

Galkin also said that the impact of psychology on the biological age of people is an "understudied subject" because of scientific reductionism.

"In the (20th) century, scientific reductionism settled in practically every field of science," he explained.

"It did in biology—the organism consists of cells Trusted Source and molecules Trusted Source, so if we understand the molecules, we can understand the organism. This has narrowed our view in many aspects. One such instance is the study of aging. Aging is a multifaceted phenomenon with social and (economic) components to it, but in biology, it is common to study it in a much more narrow sense."

There are studies saying there is a link between the psychology of aging and its molecular manifestations, according to the lead author of the study and the director of Scientific Business Development.

"We know that childhood trauma Trusted Source or Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD Trusted Source) accelerates epigenetic aging Trusted Source, (as) does psychological stress Trusted Source. Since there is a connection, we hypothesize that the physiological (low-level) pace of aging can be manipulated using psychological (high-level) therapies. This is why we built FuturSelf.AI, to provide a backbone for our new hybrid anti-aging approach."