Poverty accelerates aging

We age faster because of poverty

Kirill Stasevich, Science and Life (nkj.ru )

Some of us age faster, some slower, and it depends not only on genes, but also on environmental conditions - that is, on how a person lived. Well, how we live depends largely on how much money we have. Of course, many will say that happiness is not in money, and we have written about it ourselves. Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue with the fact that, for example, there are better and worse products, and those that are better and cost more; or that among the medicines there are more effective and less effective, and those that are more effective ... well, it is clear further.

Therefore, probably, we should not be surprised by the results of the staff of the University of Copenhagen – in their article in the European Journal of Aging, they write that poverty accelerates aging. The study involved 5,500 middle-aged people whose physical and mental condition was checked. They were tested on how much they clench their fist, or how much they can sit down and get up from a chair in 30 seconds, or how high they can jump; in tests for "cognition" it was necessary, for example, to memorize sequences of photos. The inflammatory background was also assessed in the study participants. (An inflammatory reaction of the immune system may indicate not only a specific infection, but also that the body itself does not feel well - it is known that general inflammation increases with aging.)

Obviously, two different people of the same "passport" age may have different memory, or one, say, jumps higher than the other. About the one whose memory is worse, who is physically more infirm, we will say that he is biologically older. The authors correlated the differences in biological age with the socio-economic conditions in which the study participants have lived for the last 22 years (naturally, they compared one with the other so that other factors, such as bad habits, hereditary diseases, etc., did not interfere). Those who had at least 4 years below the poverty line in their lives, performed the tests worse: they could sit down and get up from the chair in half a minute, they had a weaker grip, and they had more sluggish inflammation. Moreover, these four years could not necessarily go on in a row: a person could have several periods of poverty, interspersed with periods of well-being, but still the total poverty forced the body to age faster.

Recall that the authors of the work took into the study middle-aged people who were in need, already as adults. Perhaps poverty is easier to bear in youth, although it is difficult to say anything here without additional research. On the other hand, we know that it is better not to experience poverty in children's brains: on the one hand, low income and lack of education among parents have a bad effect on the brain development of their children, on the other hand, poor living conditions in childhood can contribute to depression.

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