A hot search on Weibo said, “Single people age faster.” A Duke University study shows that being single (too long) does accelerate aging more than high-quality intimacy.
Modern people are becoming more and more single.
Whenever they see their friends in love and marriage, singles will secretly rejoice: “Fortunately, I’m single.”
In the face of parents, seven aunts and eight aunts urging marriage, and seeing the broken bits and pieces in the marriage that they themselves do not understand, they even meditate in their hearts, “It’s good to be single for a while, and it’s always good to be single all the time.”
However, a Duke University study is about to overturn the notion of “single aristocrats”.
Recently, a Duke University study 2 years ago made a hot search.
Looking at this title, the singles who are happily surfing are surprised.
But soon, witty netizens discovered the bright spots in the hot search articles: high-quality companionship > happy single > painful relationship.
Netizens said that when they saw the hot search title, their hearts trembled, and they left the comment area with satisfaction.
But is it really so?
Falling in love VS “mother-fetal solo”
In the Duke University study, scientists surveyed 974 people (49.3 percent women) about intimacy and aging at the ages of 26, 32, 38, and 45 (nearly 20 years).
Summary of the data collection period for the Dunedin study
Scientists have found that the quality of your intimacy is strongly related to your health.
Research shows that people who have intimate relationships age more slowly. The higher the quality of the intimacy, the slower the aging process. And the higher the level of violence in intimate relationships, the faster people will age. Physical violence causes people to age faster than psychological violence.
It should be emphasized that the subject of this Duke University study is indeed the subject’s romantic intimacy. The paper clearly states that this research involves high quality romantic relationships.
Statistical charts in the paper show that participants who are infrequently in intimate relationships age faster than “lower-quality intimacy”, with a rate of 1.14 for the former and 1.10 for the latter.
However, intimacy with higher levels of partner violence (1.16) is still better.
And if you add lower quality and more violence together, the aging rate soars directly to 1.21.
How to measure aging
How do researchers tell how old you are?
There are two main indicators, one is aging speed, and the other is facial aging.
1. The rate of aging
The rate of aging is measured with 19 physiological markers: body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, glycated hemoglobin, leptin, mean arterial pressure, cardiorespiratory fitness, forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), ratio of FEV1 to forced vital capacity, total cholesterol, Triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, apolipoprotein B100/A1 ratio, lipoprotein(a), creatinine clearance, blood urea nitrogen, C-reactive protein, white blood cell count, periodontal disease and tooth surfaces affected by dental caries.
Facial aging is listed as a secondary indicator of aging.
- Facial aging
Facial Againg is listed as a secondary
When you look old, you are really old.
Facial age is a valid marker of aging, and it is very accurate in predicting mortality…
A scoring panel of eight raters rated each participant’s mugshot, taking two measures of perceived age.
The first is to assess the age range. An independent group of four raters, who saw the subjects’ mugshots, used a Likert scale to assign each participant to an appropriate age group (from 20-24 to over 70).
The second is to assess relative age. Different groups of four raters were told that all photos were of 45-year-olds. The raters then assigned each participant a “relative age” using a 7-item Likert scale (1 = looks young, 7 = looks old).
Once you have the age range and relative age scores, normalize and average to get how old a 45-year-old looks.
How to judge the quality of intimacy
So, how is the quality of intimacy measured?
In the study, subjects were given a relationship interview at the ages of 26, 32, 38 and 45 to rate their intimacy.
Relationship status is Intimate (Dating and established, Cohabiting, or Married) or Not in Relationship (Not currently dating, Dating but not in a relationship).
A variable was also constructed in the study to record how many relationships they had.
The longest relationships in the study were 14.6 years on average.In these four interviews, aged 26, 32, 38 and 45, participants were asked questions about shared activities and interests with their partner, balance of power, respect and fairness, emotional intimacy and trust. The answer is 0 (almost never), 1 (sometimes), or 2 (almost always).
Questions include “We support each other in difficult times”, “We feel very close to each other” and “I can rely on my partner when I am in trouble”.
The results showed that in the four interviews, the relationship quality of the subjects was quite high, with an average score of 15.9 points (out of 18).
adore adore…
High-quality intimacy that helps delay aging
Overall, the effects of intimacy were similar for both men and women.
Taking into account different levels of education, as well as childhood experiences, the relationship between the quality of intimacy and the rate of aging remained significant most of the time.
Research spanning nearly 20 years
Of all participants, 665 were in an intimate relationship in all four study periods (68.9%), 176 in three (18.1%), and 62 in two (6.4%).
The 55 participants (5.6%) who had never been involved in an intimate relationship or who had been in an intimate relationship only in one of the four study periods, aged significantly faster.
Overall, the cumulative biological age difference over the past 20 years was 2.9 years between the friends of the “mother-fetal solo” and those who were more often in intimate relationships.
Aging speed is linked to the number of intimate relationships experienced
The impact of relationship quality
Next, the researchers took a closer look at 909 participants who had at least two intimate relationships.
The results showed that participants with higher relationship quality experienced slower aging. For every 1 standard deviation change in relationship quality, there was a 1.0 year difference in biological age.
Relationship characteristics of intimacy linked to aging rate
Impact of Partner Violence
In terms of partner violence, a total of 58.5% of the participants said they had experienced violence. Among them, the highest rate (71.7%) occurred at the age of 32 (both physical and psychological), and the decline occurred at the age of 45.
In addition, psychological violence was more common than physical violence, which rarely occurred in the absence of psychological violence (0.2% to 1.5% in all stages).
From age 26 to 45, the decline in physical violence was greater than the decline in psychological violence, 25.5% to 9.7% (15.8% decrease), and 69.1% to 58.3% (10.8% decrease).
In intimate relationships, more violence is associated with faster aging. Each of these standard deviation changes (17.3 points) resulted in a biological age difference of 1.3 years.
It is worth noting that both the victim and the perpetrator showed a higher rate of aging, but the former was faster.
In addition, in the face age test, participants with good intimacy quality were generally younger in face age.
Briefly summarize
First, people who were in a relationship more frequently had a slower rate of biological aging than people who were infrequently involved in a relationship. There was a 2.9-year biological age difference between the two groups over the course of the study.
Second, people in high-quality relationships have a relatively slower rate of aging than people in low-quality relationships.
Third, people with more partner violence in their relationship age faster than those with less partner violence in the relationship.
Fourth, when different patterns and types of relationships were studied, those who were in high-quality relationships and low levels of partner violence experienced the slowest rates of aging, while those who were infrequently experienced intimacy, had lower relationship quality, or experienced higher levels of partner violence age faster.Furthermore, it was the cumulative amount of exposure to one of these intimate relationship characteristics over time that was most associated with aging, rather than an increase or decrease in relationship quality or partner violence at one point in time.
Finally, experiencing partner violence was associated with a greater association with aging than partner violence. Furthermore, experiences of physical violence were more strongly associated with aging than experiences of psychological violence.
Okay, I understand the reasoning.
So where to get a high-quality girlfriend/boyfriend?
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