After middle age, adults actually grow happier as they get older, despite the fact that their physical quality of life may decline. Here's the bright side of going over the hill.
By Jaimie Dalessio Clayton
Turns out the number of candles on your last birthday cake may not influence your disposition the way you might think. Instead of turning adults into grumps, growing older actually makes many of them happier.
Researchers from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom found that disposition improves after middle age, despite declining physical ability. Being overweight or obese doesn’t appear to make people any less happy, either, they found.
The new study, which looked at the lifestyle and health patterns of more than 10,000 people in the United States and the United Kingdom, builds on previous research suggesting that happiness levels over one’s lifetime generally form a U-curve. They reach a low at 45 and then rise gradually with age.
Lead study author Saverio Stranges, MD, PhD, of the Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick, suggested in a University of Warwick press release that the heightened happiness may have something to do with better coping abilities among seniors. Previous research showing that older people are better at dealing life’s crises than those who are younger supports his team’s hypothesis.
Then again, older people might just be better at letting things go.
“It could also be due to a lowering of expectations from life, with older people less likely to put pressure on themselves in the personal and professional spheres,” Dr. Stranges said in the press release.
It sounds like seniors may be more “chill” than twenty-somethings.
Finally, the researchers found that those who slept between six and eight hours per day tended to score better, both physically and mentally, than those who caught less or more ZZZs.
Those of us who haven’t yet reached our happiness peaks should take a lesson from our older, wiser, and scientifically proven happier elders: Give yourself a break and get to bed early tonight.
source: https://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health/0312/forget-what-youve-heard-about-grumpy-old-men.aspx
