The difficult people in your life could accelerate your ageing – and even your chances of death, according to a new study.
Why? So-called ‘hasslers’ make your life more stressful rather than supporting you, and chronic stress is a key driver of biological ageing. That’s because it can cause inflammation, compromise your immune system and raise your risk of cardiovascular disease (which causes heart attacks).
“What was most striking was that negative social ties were linked not just to self-reported stress or mental health, but to molecular measures of biological ageing,” study author Dr Byungkyu Lee from New York University told BBC Science Focus.
The study, published in journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), analysed the biological ages and survey data of 2,345 people ranging in chronological age from 18 to 103 years old.
It found that, for every additional hassler in someone’s life, the impact on their health worsened.
Specifically, the researchers think that the pace of ageing increases by 1.5 per cent, or about nine months of biological ageing, per hassler. So, if you had three hasslers in your life, you would be – biologically speaking – almost two-and-a-half years older than someone the same age as you with no hasslers.
What’s more, the effects are even more harmful if the hassler is a family member at the centre of your network.
But Lee said not every hassler looks the same.
“A hassler could be a parent or sibling who repeatedly creates conflict, a friend or another person in your inner circle who regularly drains your time and emotional energy,” he said.
“In everyday life, that might look like a family member who constantly demands help or criticises you, a friend who stirs up drama, or someone you feel obligated to keep dealing with even though the relationship is consistently stressful.”
Sound familiar? You’re not alone. According to the research, almost 30 per cent of people say they have at least one hassler in their close network.
Surprisingly, however, the researchers found that having a hassler as a spouse does not have the same negative impact on your health. It could be that the positives of shared routines, resources and emotional intimacy offset the biological pattern of stress in a way that other relationships can’t, Lee explained.
Even so, some people may be more likely to have hasslers in their lives than others. The research found that the number was higher for women, daily smokers, people in poorer health and people who have had difficult childhoods.
“One possibility is that people who already face more stress or fewer resources may have less ability to avoid, buffer or disengage from difficult relationships, so chronic strain becomes more embedded in everyday life,” Lee said.
Read more:
