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3mo ago

Study Links Stressful Social Ties to Faster Biological Aging, Especially Within Families

Saliva epigenetic clocks estimated about nine extra months of cellular aging per additional difficult tie.

(Photo by BearFotos on Shutterstock)
Each Stressful Person in Your Life May Be Aging You by Months, Study Finds
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Yes, this looks like a lovely family meal. But a new study found that about 30 per cent of us have a hassler in our lives — that person who gives us more than they take and is actually causing long-term stress on our body.

Overview

  • The peer-reviewed PNAS study analyzed 2,345 people, mapping their social networks and classifying frequent stress-causing contacts as hasslers while measuring aging with saliva-based epigenetic clocks.
  • Each additional hassler was tied to roughly nine months higher biological age and about a 1.5% faster current pace of aging, with effects accumulating across multiple difficult ties.
  • Nearly 30% of participants reported at least one hassler and about 10% reported two or more, indicating that negative ties are common in everyday networks.
  • Associations were strongest when the difficult person was a family member, whereas negative ties with spouses or partners did not show the same pattern, which researchers suggest may reflect offsetting support in those relationships.
  • Women, daily smokers, and people with greater childhood stress reported more hasslers, and difficult ties correlated with poorer self-rated health and more anxiety and depression; results are observational and may reflect confounding or reverse causation, prompting calls for boundary-setting and therapy as coping strategies.