SUNDAY, Dec. 21, 2025 (HealthDay News) \u2014 Think the good thoughts.<\/p>\n
Manage stress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Get your Zzzzzs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And build a strong social support system.<\/p>\n
New research shows that these factors \u2014 all of which are within your control \u2014 are powerful anti-aging tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You can learn how to perceive stress differently,” said study co-leader Jared Tanner<\/a>, a research associate professor of clinical health and psychology at the University of Florida. “Poor sleep is very treatable. Optimism can be practiced.”<\/p>\n Using MRI-based estimates of brain age, his team found that people who adhered to healthy lifestyle habits had brains that were up to 8 years younger than expected. And that was true even for folks beset with chronic pain.<\/p>\n The findings \u2014 recently published in the journal Brain Communications<\/a> \u2014 add to evidence that taking good care of yourself reaps big-time dividends.<\/p>\n “The message is consistent across our studies, health-promoting behaviors are not only associated with lower pain and better physical functioning, they appear to actually bolster health in an additive fashion at a meaningful level,” said senior author Kimberly Sibille<\/a>, an associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation.<\/p>\n For the study, researchers tracked 128 middle-aged and older adults. Most had chronic pain related to or at risk of knee osteoarthritis.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over two years, a machine learning model used MRI scans to compare each participant\u2019s estimated “brain age” with their actual, chronological age.\u00a0<\/p>\n The difference between the two \u2014 the so-called “brain age gap” \u2014 offered a measure of whole-brain health.<\/p>\n The takeaway: Hardships like chronic pain, limited education and lower income were associated with brains that appeared older. Researchers noted, however, that those links decreased over time.<\/p>\n On the other hand, maintaining a healthy weight, getting good sleep, managing stress, avoiding tobacco and cultivating supportive relationships were linked to a stronger and more enduring connection to younger-appearing brains.<\/p>\n Folks with the highest number of those beneficial factors began the study with brains that looked eight years younger than they actually were, the study found.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, during the two-year follow-up, their brains aged more slowly than others\u2019 did.<\/p>\n The findings add to a growing body of knowledge about brain aging.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier studies have examined isolated brain areas, but pain, stress and major life events tend to influence widespread brain areas.<\/p>\n For years, experts have known that aging brains are more vulnerable to dementia, Alzheimer\u2019s<\/a> disease and decline. While the new study centered on people with chronic pain, the authors said that healthy habits are likely to benefit aging in a wide range of folks.<\/p>\n “Literally for every additional healthy promoting factor, there is some evidence of neurobiological benefit,” Sibille said. “Our findings support the growing body of evidence that Lifestyle is medicine.”<\/p>\n More information<\/p>\n