It might seem like a tired cliché, but feeling young at heart really can make people live longer.
Scientists have proven that people with a youthful spring in their step and an unswerving optimism about the future seem able to cheat death.Really? Seriously? What, are you twelve?
...
The researchers believe that people who feel younger are more likely to take care of themselves, maintain a healthy weight, eat sensibly and follow medical advice.
They were also more likely to have younger friends and therefore engaged in activities of younger people which helped their positive outlook.
In contrast, those who felt older were more likely to be socially isolated and have poor personal care.
Dr Steptoe added: "Self-perceived age has the potential to change, so interventions may be possible. Individuals who feel older than their actual age could be targeted with health messages promoting positive health behaviours and attitudes toward ageing."
It is 2014, you work as a science editor for a national newspaper, there is all kinds of actual medical research being done, and you write this shit?
This is absolute content-free nonsense. The only reason it exists at all is that numerous people got to take a slice of the revenue along the way.
I indict all of you. All the way up and down the line:
- The researchers who actually dreamed up and did this "analysis".
- Their "supervisors" and the committees who approved and funded this crap.
- The publicity tool who wrote the vapid press release.
- This author, who took that fluff and puffed it up even more.
- The Telegraph for approving the copy, publishing and promoting it.
- And all the other wire feed outlets that did the same.
This is a total hack job and you should be ashamed that you took money to write it.
You are the biggest part of the problem.
People need, and actually do want, useful information dammit.
Like maybe this study...
Media Coverage of Medical Journals: Do the Best Articles Make the News?
Newspapers were more likely to cover observational studies and less likely to cover randomized controlled trials than high impact journals. Additionally, when the media does cover observational studies, they select articles of inferior quality. Newspapers preferentially cover medical research with weaker methodology.You could be (and most people sort of assume you are) filtering the available articles for innovative and compelling research, but no- you take the most glorious abundance of high quality technical information in the history of mankind and pick the stupidest stuff and make it stupider.
I don't even buy the argument that newsworthiness is different than scienceworthiness.
This article is not even clickworthy.
This IS a tired cliché, and they piled on useless dogma.
Feeling good does not make you healthy.
Being healthy makes you feel good.
What is so frakkin hard to understand about that???
Just because you assume people aren't sick doesn't mean they are healthy.
If they could think beyond one level of complexity, they might consider the option that feeling frail and fatigued IS A SYMPTOM OF SUBCLINICAL ILLNESS. That maybe all the other diagnostics are inadequate and excluding mild cases.
These writers and their publishers would like to think that by choosing such weak evidence and arguments this article is unserious and benign, but it's not.
There is plenty of data detailing the metabolic effects of subclinical infection that indicates these conclusions are patently wrong, and that the asinine and undefinable recommendation to "try to feel younger" will only delay real diagnoses and treatment and result in worse outcomes.
Disseminating "Health Information" like this is worse than not writing any at all.
