Can Unhealthy Behavior in Teens Lead to Faster Aging?
If you were obese, smoked or had a psychological disorder in adolescence, you might age faster than your peers as an adult, new research has found. Adolescents ages 11 to 15 who were obese, smoked cigarettes daily, or had a psychological disorder, such as anxiety, depression or ADHD, biologically aged nearly three months faster every year than their peers, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
The research used data from 910 people who were part of the Dunedin Study, a long-term investigation that tracked the health and behavior of participants born between April 1972 and March 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand, following them from age 3 until they were 45 years old.
By age 45, the new study found that participants who had two or more of those three general health concerns — smoking, obesity or psychological disorders — as adolescents walked 11.2 centimeters per second slower, had an older brain age by two and a half years, and had an older facial age by nearly four years than those who didn’t.
Excerpted from CNN
