5 Surprising Things That Make You Age Faster

Research out of Yale suggests that although pregnancy seems to accelerate biological aging, that surge tends to be at least partially reversed by three months postpartum. “There’s this massive recovery,” Ryan says.

The lesson isn’t that you shouldn’t have kids, or should have fewer kids, if you value longevity, he says, but rather that pregnant people and new moms need more support. The effects of Ryan’s study are “small, and they’re probably compounded by lack of support for moms, being a young mother, being in a situation where you have marginal access to health care and nutrition,” he says. “Don’t panic.”

2.  Weak social connections  

You may have heard about the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the United States, but do you know why those experiences are so serious? Put bluntly, they can be deadly.

Oft-cited research has shown that a lack of strong social connections is linked to an increased mortality risk akin to smoking 15 cigarettes daily. That’s more risky than being physically inactive or having obesity. More recent research using blood biomarkers in 12,000 Chinese adults suggests loneliness, in conjunction with other psychological states such as unhappiness, accelerates aging more than smoking. 

That’s because humans are social creatures, and feeling a lack of close ties can put your body in a chronic state of flight-or-flight. That stress wears on your body and immune system, making you more susceptible to disease and, yes, an earlier death.

“The smaller what’s called your ‘life space’ gets, the shorter your life is likely to be,” says Steven Austad, distinguished professor with the Integrative Center for Aging Research at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. “Life space being all of the areas that you visit, every place that you go. For some people, life space is their house. And some people are out and about and meeting people, yakking with their friends … and those are the people that are going to stay healthy longer.”

3. Extreme exercise (sometimes) 

Staying active is, undeniably, a key to a long and healthy life. But, like most habits, the extremes can hurt us — and exercise is no exception.

In a 2023 study, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, researchers analyzed data from Finnish twins who’d been followed over 45 years. When they squared some of the participants’ exercise habits with measures of biological aging gleaned from blood samples taken at the end of the study period, they found that those who were the most physically active looked about 1.8 years “older” than participants who were “active” but not “highly active.” The study showed that both the sedentary and highly active people had higher levels of proteins linked to kidney function, which in turn raises the risk of heart disease and sudden cardiac death.

The study authors say some people’s inherited inclination toward healthy habits, including exercise, may play more of a role in mortality risk than exactly how much exercise they do. Other research has shown that although long-term moderate- or high-intensity physical activity at rates more than four times the weekly minimum — exercising upward of 10 hours a week — isn’t linked to a higher risk of early death, it’s not linked to a lower risk of death, either. In other words, at some point, working out comes with diminishing returns.

“If you took somebody who was an ultramarathoner and you gave them one of these [biological age] tests right after doing the ultramarathon, they would probably look like they were older,” Kaeberlein says. “So exercise is interesting because in the moment, it’s actually a pretty big stress on your body. But then all of these protective mechanisms are engaged that actually have a net positive benefit.”

4. Losing weight later in life

Similarly, though obesity is linked to a host of potentially life-limiting health issues, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease, that doesn’t mean being underweight or losing a lot of weight is always healthy. In fact, Austad says, “we know that having a little extra weight is protective later in life.” 

In a 2023 paper, researchers found that people who went from obese to nonobese in middle- to late-adulthood (ages 40-84) appeared biologically “older” than people who remained obese. People who lost weight earlier in life, however, seemed to slow their biological age. These findings could be related to the concept that later-in-life weight loss may be unintentional and linked to frailty and other health issues, the study authors say.

“With the growing aging population, monitoring weight fluctuation could help identify the population at high risk of accelerated aging and, eventually, postpone aging-related health complications,” they wrote.

5. Living in a concrete jungle

Living near green spaces can add an average of 2.5 years to your life, but living away from them may cut into your lifespan, according to a 2023 study that looked at blood biomarkers associated with aging. More specifically, the study authors evaluated 20 years of data from almost 1,000 city dwellers and found that those with less access to parks and other green spaces seemed to have, in general, accelerated epigenetic aging.

Though race, gender and socioeconomic status played a role, they didn’t fully explain the effect of nature, or lack thereof, on people’s biological age, the research found. 

“At least for some people, being in a very urban environment where you don’t have any access to nature can certainly create biological stress, psychological stress, and you would expect that to have a negative impact on health and potentially aging,” Kaeberlein says. But “there are other coping mechanisms that people can use related to mindfulness and healthy relationships with other people that can probably offset some of those negative consequences.”

When in doubt, Austad says, “get out of your chair, get outside and stay socially engaged.”