Unexpected side effects
Scientists have established a "rejuvenating" effect of quarantine
Scientists of the Moscow State Psychological and Pedagogical University (MGPPU) have studied the effect of quarantine on the biopsychological age of a person. They found that most workers after self-isolation feel subjectively younger than they felt a year ago, but the biological rate of aging has increased. The study was published in the journal Modern Foreign Psychology (Berezina T.N., Rybtsov S.A. The effect of quarantine on indicators of biopsychological age in Russia (longitudinal study).
MSPPU scientists conducted a long–term study of the biopsychological age of adults - a general characteristic of an individual's condition, his somatic and psychological health, compliance of personal and physiological characteristics with age norms. The concept of biopsychological age can be described using two scales: biological age and psychological age.
The first measurement was carried out in 2019, the second measurement – in 2020 (after six months of quarantine), experts say. Stress factors were identified: the disease itself, post-traumatic stress and quarantine factors (social isolation, eating disorders, decreased physical activity and anxiety). The study involved adult working people over 35 years old, working pensioners and non-working pensioners with chronic diseases.
To analyze psychological age, scientists used the "Method of self–assessment of psychological age" - the participants of the experiment estimated their age on a one-hundred-point scale; and the "Index of relative psychological aging", according to which experts correlated the psychological and calendar age of the subjects. Negative values indicate a person's perception of himself as younger than his age.
"The study showed that after six months of quarantine measures, most of the working respondents felt subjectively younger than their calendar age and younger than they felt a year ago, before quarantine," commented Tatiana Berezina, professor of the Department of Scientific Foundations of Extreme Psychology at the Faculty of Extreme Psychology of the Moscow State University.
According to her, women began to feel younger by an average of 3.3 years (adults) and 7.2 years (pensioners), and men – by 6.8 years (adults) and 4.7 years (pensioners).
The index of relative biological aging (the ratio of biological age and proper biological age) allowed us to assess how much a person is older than the statistical age norm according to his state of health. To measure biological age, researchers used indicators of various body systems: blood pressure, breath retention, static balancing on the left leg with closed eyes, body weight, subjective assessment of diseases.
"It is interesting that in the group of pensioners with chronic diseases, there was no change in biological age, and the biological age in the working groups increased by more than one year, which would be assumed with normal aging," Berezina noted.
The impact of quarantine on the somatic health indicators of individuals, according to scientists, turned out to be diverse. The body weight of women has not changed during quarantine. Self-assessment of their health status among men and women of all groups also remained at the same level. Some health indicators have even improved during quarantine: arterial pulse pressure indicators have normalized in working adult women and pensioners with chronic diseases; arterial systolic pressure (arterial pressure at the time of heart contraction) has normalized in men.
"Quarantine has had a strong negative impact on the physical development of people. They reduced or stopped playing sports altogether and generally began to move less, so the characteristics of physical fitness of the body sharply decreased. In all groups, the time of static balancing decreased – the ability of a person to stand on one leg with his eyes closed," Berezina said.
The researchers noted that in working adult women, balancing time decreased by 26 percent, in non–working pensioners with chronic diseases - by 13. Among men, the indicators also decreased: among working adult men by 37 percent, among working pensioners – at the trend level. Also, the time of breath retention on exhalation decreased in men: in unemployed pensioners with chronic diseases – by four percent, in the rest – at the trend level.
The study was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 19-18-00058.
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