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In your face: the secrets of healthy living
(Sunday Times)
Updated: 2006-01-30 14:48 Your face really is your
fortune. If you are married, of a higher social class and have fewer than four
children, then you probably look younger than you actually are.
By contrast,
significant weight loss, a fall in social status and being a lonely singleton
can add years to a person鈥檚 appearance, researchers have found.
A new study has quantified the impact that a combination of lifestyle,
medical history and diet have on how your looks age. According to the public
health specialists behind the research, the findings show that a youthful face
is an accurate indicator of good health.
鈥淚t is a lot more dangerous looking one year older than being one year
older,鈥� said Dr Kaare Christensen of the Danish Twin Registry, who led the
study, to be published in the journal Age and Ageing.
鈥淚f you are not depressed, not lonely, not a smoker and not too skinny, you
are basically doing well,鈥� she said. By contrast, looking old for one鈥檚 age was
linked to increased mortality.
Marriage is more beneficial for a woman, knocking almost two years from her
apparent age, but only one year from a man鈥檚 appearance.
Yet men benefit more from having children, possibly because they take on less
of the burden of childcare. Having one to three children makes a man look a year
younger, but makes no difference to how a woman is perceived. The benefits
disappear in families with four or more children.
A move up the social scale brings the most dramatic benefits, making a man or
a woman look up to four years younger than their true age.
For men, becoming slightly chubbier as you get older has a dramatic effect on
helping to maintain a youthful appearance, by helping to straighten the
wrinkles. Gaining weight to add two points to one鈥檚 body mass index (BMI) will
take off a year, whereas a woman would need to add seven points to gain the same
effect.
A combination of the various factors explains why some people in their
forties can look up to seven years younger than their contemporaries.
A married woman in a high socioeconomic group, who has avoided excessive sun,
could appear 7.2 years younger than a single, jobless woman who has indulged in
too many hours in a tanning salon.
Men can readily 鈥渓ose鈥� a decade. An affluent married man with no more than
three children will look 10 years younger than a contemporary who is jobless,
single and has lost weight to cut his BMI by two points.
The researchers reached their conclusions by asking a group of nurses to
guess the ages of 1,826 identical and non-identical twins in their seventies.
They then looked at environmental factors including marital status, parenthood
and class.
Past scientific studies have established that non-genetic factors account for
40% of the variations in perceived age.
The wizening effect of heavy smoking and drinking is surprisingly modest. A
male smoker with a 20-a-day habit must smoke for 20 years to gain a year鈥檚 extra
wrinkles, while the effects of tobacco smoke on a woman鈥檚 skin causes only half
the damage.
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