You’re only as old as you feel, goes the saying. But as research links a lower ‘subjective age’ with longevity, WH asks…
On a recent Friday night, I did something I’m not proud of. Having spent an evening in the company of my best friends – and several wellmade margaritas – I experienced, while walking the short distance from the north London Tube stop to my home, the kind of hunger there’s only one cure for. I whipped out my phone and the deed was done in minutes. Half an hour later, I was horizontal on my sofa and contemplating whether to dispose of the empty pizza box now or when I woke up the next morning.
It isn’t often that I succumb to a midnight feast, but it would be fair to say I have form. Somewhere in a dusty photo album there’s a picture of me in Magaluf in the same, sofa-slumped state; tanned teenage legs propping up a pizza box, the predawn hour clearly visible on my furry, leopard print watch. Only, I’m not 19 any more; I’m 41.
I’m divorced, no kids – happily single. My scalp has yet to sprout a grey hair and I’m regularly assured, without asking, that I pass for an unquantifiable thirtysomething. In fact, with the exception of swapping Infernos (if you know, you know; if you don’t, its interior was used in a nightclub scene in the first The Inbetweeners film) for establishments with a rather less sticky floor, the life I lead today doesn’t dramatically differ from the one I had 20 years ago. I feel as energised and engaged as I ever did; if anything, I’m more driven. And while society – not to mention the Sidebar of Shame – would have everyone believe that acting like a 20-year-old in one’s fifth decade is emphatically ‘not a good look’, the science is actually on my side in this matter.
A growing body of data suggests those who have a lower ‘subjective age’ – the age you feel, rather than the age you are – remain generally healthier over time. So powerful is this phenomenon thought to be that the youthfully minded may even live longer. The association between mindset and longevity was first observed in the 1970s, but in the past decade, research has proven the link to be stronger than previously thought. A 2015 study by Florida State University and the University of Montpellier found that subjective age could help identify those at greater risk of immune dysfunction and mortality.
Three years later, research by Seoul National University and Yonsei University found that participants who felt younger had larger grey matter volume than those who felt older. And as recently as last year, University of Cologne research found a positive attitude to challenges to be a predictor of ‘successful ageing’, defined as a combination of the absence of disease, good phy
