Aging is one of the biggest problems of our time, and science is constantly looking for ways to deal with it. Identifying the multiple factors that influence it — from genetic to environmental — is one of the keys to delaying age-related deterioration in sleep.

Finding out how various environmental factors affect aging was the goal of a study published in US aging. An analysis based on data from the CHARLS database of nearly 12,000 Chinese adults shows that emotional factors, such as loneliness or unhappiness, accelerate aging more than smoking. The impact of poor mental health, including poor sleep, was comparable to severe lung or liver disease, according to the study.

The study was conducted by Deep Longevity, an artificial intelligence company, in collaboration with the universities of Stanford and Hong Kong. The experiment was based on the company’s own aging clock, which is a statistical model that analyzes several variables to estimate biological age using cells rather than chronological age (based on date of birth).

There is an epigenetic clock that analyzes the genome to determine this age, but this Hong Kong company has included the psychological part. As the company explains, in 2020 they created the first aging watch, in which they showed that each person’s self-perception of their own age is a factor in all-cause mortality. It has also been shown how other external factors such as exercise or diet can change the rate of aging.

Based on all these parameters, it is possible to classify the rate of human aging and transform this data into possible therapeutic approaches, as he recently explained. Independent Manuel Collado, director of the Laboratory of Cellular Aging, Cancer and Aging at the Institute for Health Research of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), “would say that the epigenetic clock is the most accurate known measure” for analyzing aging. And he also talked about the future prospects of being able to “diagnose” cellular aging in order to be able to prescribe drugs based on this accelerated aging.

Psychological factors of aging

In this new study, the physical and mental aspects of aging are linked. The researchers analyzed data from 11,914 Chinese adults to compare how emotional states and social factors affect biological age. Thus, they showed that the rate of aging increases if someone feels lonely, unhappy, or has trouble sleeping. This effect was even worse than that of tobacco and was on par with severe lung and liver disease.

The study acknowledges that a small number of previous studies have shown that the relationship between psychological factors such as stress, mental health, loneliness, or negative perceptions of aging can speed up this process, although some, such as the one published in Genomic biology in 2015, they estimated an increase in biological age in individuals with accumulated stress up to 3.6 years.

The study used a combination of blood biomarkers, biometrics, and participants’ gender to create a model that identified various potentially age-altering psychological factors such as stress, sleep problems, loneliness, unhappiness, marriage, rural living, and smoking. A history of serious illness was also measured.

Individually, the most influential factors were smoking (added 1.25 years to biological age), poor sleep (plus 0.44 years), or, conversely, being married (0.59 year decrease). However, psychological distress (considering the eight variables that were included in psychological well-being) had a larger negative effect, adding 1.65 years of biological age to the individual.