People who make your life more difficult may be aging you faster, according to recent research.
In the study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that people with more hasslers in their life, or those “who create problems or make life more difficult,” have a higher biological age compared to their actual chronological age.
“These results suggest that the hasslers in one’s social environment may constitute an overlooked but consequential biological risk factor,” the authors write.
The study even accounted for several other factors, including occupation, adverse childhood experiences and smoking. But still, the impact of negative social ties remained significant, the study notes.
Just how significant? “Each additional hassler is associated with approximately 1.5% faster biological aging and roughly nine (months) of additional biological age among individuals of the same chronological age,” the authors found.
But not all hasslers were the same. Family and friend hasslers showed “detrimental associations,” whereas spouse hasslers did not.
And biological aging wasn’t the only impact. Hasslers were also associated with multiple adverse mental and physical health outcomes like depression, anxiety and higher body mass index.
“These findings together highlight the critical role of negative social ties in biological aging as chronic stressors and the need for interventions that reduce harmful social exposures to promote healthier aging trajectories,” the authors added.
The authors note, however, that the findings are associations and do not prove the “causal effect of negative social ties on aging processes.”
Moreover, there’s no single definition of biological age and no definitive research to prove faster biological aging results in early death.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dealing with difficult people may age you, study finds