Positive Views On Ageing Could Add 7.5 Years To Your Life

Let’s start this off with a hefty caveat: if you want to increase your longevity, eating well, getting enough sleep and exercising regularly have repeatedly proven to add years to your life.

Even the best mindset in the world likely can’t outperform those science-backed benefits.

However, some research suggests that how we think about ageing could impact our lifespan, too – seemingly independently of, though potentially leading to, a deliberate change in our lifestyle habits.

Starting in the 1970s, researchers began tracking hundreds of over-50s as part of the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement (OLSAR).

They were asked to fill in surveys, including questions about their feelings on ageing.

The authors of a 2002 study compared those results with mortality rates within the group.

Up to 23 years after the first survey, those who’d had a more positive view of ageing decades earlier on lived 7.5 years longer on average than people with negative perceptions.

“This advantage remained after age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and functional health were included as covariates,” the researchers wrote. Participants’ will to live also seemed to matter here.

The authors added at the time: “Our study carries two messages… The discouraging one is that negative self-perceptions can diminish life expectancy; the encouraging one is that positive self-perceptions can prolong life expectancy”.

Again, this research doesn’t suggest you can cancel your gym membership and expect the same longevity results simply by embracing more positive thinking.

In fact, because this study only found a correlation and not a causal relationship, it didn’t even prove that positive thinking definitely led to greater longevity.

But this isn’t a zero-sum game.

More recent research has found that improvement in either physical or mental ability after 65 is not only possible, but relatively common (the study authors saw it in about 47% of the over-65s they studied for 12 years).

Those improvements seemed far more likely among those with a positive self-perception of ageing.

Maybe people less inclined to see older people as inherently frail might try harder to preserve their muscle mass, e.g., through strength training. Dr Eric Kim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, told American Heart Association News: “There’s a connection between mindsets and health behaviours. One leads to the other”.

We don’t know for sure exactly where the link between positive thoughts about ageing and a longer life begins and ends – but using it to frame great lifestyle choices seems like a pretty solid plan.