Whoever has never crossed paths on the street has found themselves in Facebook, or have even seen that classmate on TV who seems to have aged much worse than us, or even worse, who has aged much better. The one who seems to have made a pact with the devil, for which it seems that the years do not pass, or that they pass very quickly, and they make you think about the bad life, or the good one, about whether he has had many troubles, whether She has a very stressful job, lack of moisturizing creams, lack of gym or too many children… What would never occur to us is if the extra years that have fallen upon her are, among other reasons, due to live for rent.
One of the largest surveys in the world, Understanding Societythe UK Household Study (UKHLS), which has followed more than 100,000 Britons for decades, has concluded that The biological clock of English people who pay private rent runs faster than that of homeowners, or that of those who pay rent for public housing. Specifically, every little more than seven real years an extra one would be added. A variable that would also be affecting aging much more than not having a job or having smoked for some years.
As this is an observational study, the authors do not establish a direct causality between rent and aging, but rather a mere correlation. However, they do emphasize that numerous aspects of housing are associated with physical and mental health, especially cold, mold, overcrowding, risk of injury, stress and even stigma, depending on the area, they conclude. the study that has just been published The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
The researchers took advantage of all the material collected by UKHLS in 40,000 homes, which translates into knowing the type of construction, the aid received for rent, if they have heating, where it is located, in addition to the price, if they are late in paying, or if they are thinking of moving. They then selected 1,420 respondents of those who had data available for at least ten years on sex, nationality, education, socioeconomic status, diet, stress level, financial problems, weight or whether they smoked, and They took blood to obtain epigenetic informationand deduce the aging indices.
“Housing circumstances get under the skin. There is a link between psychological stress and ageing. Our results suggest that difficult housing circumstances in the UK negatively affect health through faster biological aging,” concludes the study by Dr. Amy Clair and Louise Cullen, from the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex. However, they also clarify that “these effects are reversiblewhich highlights the importance of housing policy in improving health.”