Do you want to live long? Don't slow down!
According to The Daily Mail (The secret of long life? It's all down to how fast you react), to the list of factors most related to a person's longevity, another one was unexpectedly added, which was not particularly thought about before – the speed of a person's reaction to events happening around him.
In the 1980s, researchers from the University of Edinburgh tested 7,414 volunteers: they were asked to press one of five buttons depending on which symbol appeared on the screen. Thus, the doctors determined the average reaction time of each of them.
Since then, 1,289 of the subjects have died, 568 of them due to various heart diseases. In 1998-2004, scientists began to process the data obtained and compared the reaction rate, the degree of addiction to smoking, weight and other factors in those who died and those who were still alive. It turned out that men and women with a slow reaction are 2.6 times more likely to die prematurely from whatever causes. Only smoking with its parameter (3.03) showed a greater risk of death.
Physical activity, blood pressure, heart rate, the ratio of waist circumference to hip circumference, alcohol consumption and body mass index – all these parameters were much less associated with the life expectancy of volunteers. Even in cases where people died from heart problems, reaction time was second only to blood pressure.
Scientists believe that the reaction speed is largely determined by intelligence, which in turn is influenced by the brain's ability to process information and, accordingly, give response commands to the body (the overall speed and integrity of the system).
Scientists have long claimed that smart people lead a healthier lifestyle, are less prone to depression and live longer (here is another confirmation of this). Previously, this was explained by the fact that a person with a high IQ is unlikely to smoke and is more likely to try to avoid excess weight. But this explanation did not work in all cases, now everything has become somewhat clearer.
The results of the study are published in the journal Intelligence (Geoff Dera, G. David Battya, and Ian J. Deary, The association between IQ in adolescence and a range of health outcomes at 40 in the 1979 US National Longitudinal Study of Youth)
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the "Membrane"
16.03.2009