You know that colleague you see Monday through Friday? The one who keeps telling you about their relationship drama, monopolizing lunch-break conversation and expecting sympathetic commentary about the same issues every single day? Or what about your dad, who calls with tech questions multiple times a week, then proceeds to criticize your lifestyle but still expects you to schedule his doctor’s visits?
A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, confirms what many of us have long suspected: These people may make you age faster.
While having healthy social relationships is actually good for you (mortality increases with perceived loneliness), the US study authors report that “having more hasslers is associated with accelerated biological aging.”
The keyword here is “associated.” A higher number of hasslers, of people who cause you stress, was observed in study participants that also exhibited accelerated biological aging. That doesn’t prove that the human energy suckers cause your aging.
More annoying people — even faster aging
Still, the researchers found that there’s a cumulative effect — the more of these exhausting people you regularly interact with, the worse it gets. Each one of them was associated with an increase in the aging process by an average 1.5%. That means your body would age 1.015 biological years in the span of one calendar year.
Doesn’t sound like much? Over a 10-year period, this rate results in almost two extra months of biological aging for each hassler you’re dealing with.
One reason for this could be that having to spend time with hasslers comes with effects equivalent to traditional stressors like money problems or workplace stress, the authors say. These stressors contribute to a higher risk for cardiovascular and other diseases, reduced immune function and increased inflammation in the body.
Women more likely to report having hasslers than men
For the study, the researchers took saliva samples from 2,345 participants in the US state of Indiana, then tested the DNA for markers of biological aging. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 103. As part of the survey, they also answered questions about their social relationships and described their general health.
As it turns out, women were more likely to report having hasslers in their wider social circle than men (no word, though, on whether said hasslers were more often male or female). People with poor health to begin with, and those who had a difficult childhood, were also more likely to report having to deal with hasslers.
And who are the hasslers? There are more of them among people you cannot escape. Study participants reported a higher proportion of hasslers among colleagues or roommates. Those with personal experience can probably confirm: Having to work or even live with an unpleasant person is particularly stressful.
Not all hasslers are equal
But the connection stands in general, not just with roommates: People who have to deal with hasslers on a regular basis age faster. That biological process involves your body accumulating unrepaired molecular damage, which leads to a decline in various bodily functions and a higher vulnerability to sickness and injury. Growing old is not for the faint of heart.
Faster biological aging also “robustly predicts critical health outcomes, including chronic conditions and mortality risk,” as the study points out.
The research shows, too, that some hasslers have a stronger association with faster biological aging than others. Perhaps unsurprisingly, annoying family members show a stronger association to accelerated aging than hasslers who are not related to you.
But there’s one exception: The researchers found no significant association between faster biological aging and a spouse that was labeled a hassler. So an annoying husband or girlfriend seems to not make you grow gray hair any quicker. Small mercies.
Edited by: Rosalie Delaney
