Most people feel younger or older than they really are – and this 'subjective age' has a big effect on their physical and mental health.
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| As they get older, people with a younger subjective age are less likely to develop dementia and they even have a reduced risk of mortality (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images) |
Imagine, for a moment, that you had no birth certificate and
your age was simply based on the way you feel inside. How old would you say you
are?
Like your height or shoe size, the number of years that have
passed since you first entered the world is an unchangeable fact. But everyday
experience suggests that we often don’t experience ageing the same way, with
many people feeling older or younger than they really are.
Scientists are increasingly interested in this quality. They
are finding that your ‘subjective age’ may be essential for understanding the
reasons that some people appear to flourish as they age – while others fade.
“The extent to which older adults feel much younger than they are may determine
important daily or life decisions for what they will do next,” says Brian Nosek
at the University of Virginia.
Its importance doesn’t end there. Various studies have even shown that your subjective age also can predict various important health outcomes, including your risk of death. In some very real ways, you
really are ‘only as old as you feel’.
Given these enticing results, many researchers are now
trying to unpick the many biological, psychological, and social factors that
shape the individual experience of ageing – and how this knowledge might help
us live longer, healthier lives.
This new understanding of the ageing process has been
decades in the making. Some of
the earliest studies charting the gap between felt and chronological age appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. That trickle of initial
interest has now turned into a flood. A torrent of new studies during the last
10 years have explored the potential psychological and physiological
consequences of this discrepancy.
One of the most intriguing strands of this research has
explored the way subjective age interacts with our personality. It is now well
accepted that people tend to mellow as they get older, becoming less
extroverted and less open to new experiences – personality changes which are less pronounced in people who are younger at heart and
accentuated in people with older subjective ages.
Interestingly,
however, the people with younger subjective ages also became more conscientious
and less neurotic – positive changes that come with normal ageing. So they
still seem to gain the wisdom that comes with greater life experience. But it
doesn’t come at the cost of the energy and exuberance of youth. It’s not as if
having a lower subjective age leaves us frozen in a state of permanent
immaturity.
Feeling younger than your years also seems to come with a lower risk of depression and greater mental wellbeing as we age. It also means better physical
health, including your risk of dementia, and less of a chance that you will be
hospitalised for illness.
Yannick Stephan at the University of Montpellier examined
the data from three longitudinal studies which together tracked more than
17,000 middle-aged and elderly participants.
Most people felt about eight years younger than their actual
chronological age. But some felt they had aged – and the consequences were
serious. Feeling between 8 and 13 years older than your actual age resulted in
an 18-25% greater risk of death over the study periods, and greater disease burden –
even when you control for other demographic factors such as education, race or
marital status.
There are many reasons why subjective age tells us so much
about our health. It may be a direct result of those accompanying personality
changes, with a lower subjective age meaning that you enjoy a greater range of
activities (such as travelling or learning a new hobby) as you age. “Studies
have found, for example, that subjective age is predictive of physical activity
patterns,” Stephan says.
But the mechanism linking physical and mental wellbeing to subjective age almost certainly acts in both directions. If
you feel depressed, forgetful, and physically vulnerable, you are likely to
feel older. The result could
be a vicious cycle, with psychological and physiological factors both contributing
to a higher subjective age and worse health, which makes us feel even older and
more vulnerable. (Continue reading)
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