Loneliness and unhappiness can age you faster than smoking, new research shows. Psychological factors add up to 1.65 years to your biological age.
Depression. Like anger, sadness weighs heavily on the face, and can cause wrinkles from repetitively frowning and furrowing brows.
Alcohol: Drinking too much alcohol can dehydrate and damage your skin over time, leading to signs of premature aging. Poor sleep: Studies show that low quality (or not enough) sleep makes your cells age faster. Stress: When you're stressed, your brain pumps out cortisol, a stress hormone.
According to researchers, certain psychological issues — such as hopelessness, unhappiness, and loneliness — increase a person's biological age more than smoking.
Aging acceleration was detected in people with a history of stroke, liver and lung diseases, smokers, and most interestingly, people in a vulnerable mental state. In fact, feeling hopeless, unhappy, and lonely was shown to increase one's biological age more than smoking.
Young people feel loneliness the most
However, in contrast, the young report feeling lonely much more – with 40% saying they have felt this way at least some of the time. The BBC Loneliness Experiment surveyed 55,000 people and showed that 16–24-year-olds feel loneliness the most.
Over 60% of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 22 are the loneliest age group. The number of people who live alone has increased by over 30% in the last few decades.
Nicotine stimulates the release of the chemical dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is involved in triggering positive feelings. It is often found to be low in people with depression, who may then use cigarettes to temporarily increase their dopamine supply.
Often times, peer pressure can inspire unhealthy activities like smoking. Hence the higher rates of smoking among the less happy. People who are less happy may be more susceptible to addictive behaviors.
Not only does obesity have more negative health consequences than smoking, drinking, or poverty, it also affects more people. Approximately 23 percent of Americans are obese. An additional 36 percent are overweight.
For example, the team suggests that the biological aging process isn't steady and appears to accelerate periodically — with the greatest bursts coming, on average, around ages 34, 60, and 78.
Skin becomes loose and sagging, bones lose their mass, and muscles lose their strength as a result of time spent living life. Most people begin to notice a shift in the appearance of their face around their 40's and 50's, with some also noticing a change in their 30's.
Being Depressed
For starters, when people are depressed, they may end up tensing specific facial muscles, grimacing or frowning, and these "negative facial expressions can become sort of etched into the skin in the form of fine lines and wrinkles," Day explains.
Stress induced aging is real, a clinical study revealed that a high-stress lifestyle makes you look up to 3.5 years older. * Stress is such a serious problem that Dr. Howard Murad built an entire skincare program around four guiding principles to help alleviate stress for healthier skin, mind, and body.
The fact that an aura of sadness can attract partners is not uncommon. On average, men find women with some psychological vulnerability more attractive, according to a 2012 University of Texas at Austin study which looked at the connection between sexual exploitability and sexual attraction.
When people stop smoking, studies show: anxiety, depression and stress levels are lower. quality of life and positive mood improve.
We're not going to sugarcoat it – quitting vaping is hard, but the benefits are well worth the struggle. Giving up nicotine can actually lead to reduced stress, anxiety, and depression. It's true.
self medication: nicotine has central antidepressant properties and depressed patients could be using it as a form of selfmedication to relieve symptoms. Nicotine releases dopamine in the mesolimbic reward pathway, elevating mood and improving wellbeing.
When you smoke, nicotine reaches the brain in eight seconds and releases dopamine. Dopamine causes feelings of pleasure and relaxation, a sensation the body craves again and again. The irony is that while you may experience temporary relief from stress on a cognitive level, the body is experiencing increased stress.
In the short-term, vaping nicotine may feel good by stimulating production of the “feel good” chemical in the brain called dopamine which can create feelings of pleasure and relaxation. Vaping nicotine also creates social opportunities to connect with other people and provides a distraction from stressful situations.
This is because your body and brain have become dependent on nicotine, and as you begin to starve yourself of the drug, your dopamine levels are significantly reduced. As the “feel-good” neurotransmitter1, these reduced levels of dopamine are the key reason for feeling depressed after quitting smoking.
Who is most likely to be lonely? A recent study conducted by Cigna found that over half of Americans are experiencing loneliness. This study found that underrepresented racial groups and people with lower incomes tended to be lonelier than their counterparts.
Yes, it is common to experience feelings of loneliness in your 20s. This can be due to various factors such as changes in life circumstances, differences in personal values and interests with friends or family, or difficulty in making new connections.
Published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a study found that people's expectations from interpersonal relationships undergo considerable changes as they age — resulting in them often feeling lonelier as they grow older, even if they're not alone.