The longer we feel young, the more we preserve our health.
Do you ever feel old? The age we feel, also called “subjective age”, is a concept that goes beyond simple perception. Feeling younger than our actual age is associated with longer life, better mental and physical health, and positive psychological traits (e.g. optimism, hope, or resilience). As we age, the gap between our physical age and our perceived age becomes more pronounced. Feeling young is not just a matter of perception but is actually linked to objective health outcomes. To combat this feeling of aging, it is therefore essential to maintain a healthy lifestyle by working particularly on one factor, according to researchers at Stockholm University.
For their research, the conclusions of which were published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B“, they first asked 429 people aged 18 to 70 how old they were, how many days in the last month they had not had enough sleep and how sleepy they felt. Result: for each insufficient night’s sleep, the subjects felt 0.23 years older To check if it was indeed the lack of sleep that gave them this impression, they conducted a second study in which they asked 186 people aged 18 to. 46 years of sleeping 4 hours a night for two days then 9 hours the next two nights.Given that sleep is essential for brain function and general well-being, we decided to test whether sleep holds any secrets to preserving the feeling of youth.”, explains Leonie Balter, one of the researchers of the study. It would seem so since at the end of the study, the volunteers felt 4.4 years older when they had slept 4 hours compared to a night of 9 hours. Furthermore, the transition from a state of extreme alert to a state of extreme sleepiness was associated with the feeling of aging by 10 years in both studies.
To feel young even as you age, it is therefore essential to get a good night’s sleep.“Protecting our sleep is crucial to maintaining a youthful feeling. This, in turn, can support a more active lifestyle and encourage health-promoting behaviors, as feeling young and alert is important to our motivation to be active “ reacted Leonie Balter. A recommendation to take into consideration when we know that in France, we sleep on average only 6 hours 48 minutes per night…