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People who look older than their age are also more at risk of having certain diseases, such as osteoporosis, cataracts or hearing loss. In any case, this is the conclusion of a study carried out by scientists in the Netherlands.
What if looking older than your age was also linked to the onset of certain illnesses? This is the result of a study conducted by Dutch researchers.
An estimated age from photos
For this work, the scientists estimated the age of 2,679 people based only on full-face and profile photos, on which they wore no makeup or jewelry. The recruited participants were between 50 and 90 years old, with an average age of 66 years on average. Each volunteer received a perceived age score, calculated by taking the difference between their age and their estimated age. The higher the difference, the younger a person appears.
Those who “look young” have fewer health problems
At the same time, the researchers asked them about the health problems they might suffer from. After estimating their age and calculating the scores, the experts therefore examined their data on the lifestyle and health of the volunteers, such as their weight, their smoking habits and their state of health.
Result : “Those with the highest age score were mostly men (61%), who smoked less and had the highest BMI” write the researchers. These participants also had better thinking skills. They also had:
- 15% less likely to suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease;
- 24% lower risk of osteoporosis;
- 25% less risk of cataracts;
- 24% lower risk of hearing loss.
Being young has an impact on overall health
The lead author of this work, Prof. Tamar Nijsten, dermatologist at Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam explains: “We specifically investigated the link between apparent youth and various common age-related health conditions and found that apparent youth is linked to lower measures of systemic aging. In other words, if you look younger than you are, the health of your organ systems, body, and mind is likely to reflect the same.”.
For Professor Nijsten, co-author of this work, “This is not a definitive study, but it is probably the best study to date providing evidence that perceived age also reflects internal aging.”
Further research should confirm these results.
“The study clearly demonstrates that something is going on, probably on a biological level and beyond the usual lifestyle factors such as UV exposure or smoking” argue the authors.
However, they recognize limitations to their work. The first relates to the fact that their study is simply based on observations. The second comes from the fact that the people included in this cohort are all European. Scientists therefore believe that further work is needed to determine whether or not these conclusions can be applied to other types of populations.