HHS HealthBeat (April 23, 2010)

How old are you really?

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Age may really be just a number. Calendar-years age, anyway. At Purdue University, researcher Markus Schafer says subjective age – how old you feel you are – may be a better guide to how well your mind works.

Schafer looked at data on 500 people ages 55 to 74 in 1995, and their thinking abilities 10 years later. He says people who felt younger than the calendar said they were tended to wind up doing better on those tests:

"The message seems to be that feeling younger actually provides a lot of benefits for people for successful aging." (5 seconds)

Schafer says keeping the mind and body active, and staying involved with people, can help people feel younger.

The study in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011