Loneliness Ticks Our Clocks Faster

16 October 2022
Habiba Yehia

According to a recent article published in Aging-US, loneliness and depression

can accelerate the aging process more than smoking.
Scientists all across the world are attempting to employ artificial intelligence to
develop a new form of "clock" that can determine your true biological age.
Chronological age is determined by the number of years under your belt, but
just because two people have celebrated the same number of birthdays does not
imply that they are equally healthy.
In 2021, a decades-long study of
2.3 million New Zealanders
concluded that there is a strong link
between mental problems and the
development of physical disease and
death.
With these findings in mind, researchers invented a new aging clock that
considers various psychological health factors and blood biomarkers.
Finally, the researchers discovered that psychological factors such as being
unhappy or lonely added 1.65 years to a person's age. Other individual
demographic characteristics, such as gender, living area, marital status, and
smoking status, had a greater impact.
The psychological well-being data of the participants were based on eight
feelings: bothered, lonely, unhappy, unfocused, restless, depressed, hopeless, or
fearful.
This isn't to say that the algorithm found smoking to be less harmful to health
than depression or loneliness; smoking is still a major risk factor for many cancers
and heart disease.
However, based on the clock's predictions, an unmarried person who rarely
feels happy often feels hopeless, and has trouble sleeping may have a greater
impact on their health than smoking alone.
As a result, promoting mental health may be viewed as a potential anti-aging
treatment with benefits comparable to more tangible, physical therapeutic
approaches.

This research was made with the help of Carly Cassella.

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-ai-based-study-suggests-unhappiness-could-age-some-people-
more-than-smoking
https://www.aging-us.com/article/204264/text
https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2022/10/BiologicalClockAging.jpg
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/loneliness-and-unhappiness-can-age-us-faster-than-smoking-
new-study