Unlike chronological age, which simply refers to how long you\u2019ve been alive, biological age refers to how fast your cells, tissues, and organs are aging, according to the Cleveland Clinic<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThese results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level,\u201d Daisy Fancourt<\/a>, a lead author of the study and professor of psychobiology & epidemiology at University College London told The Guardian<\/a>. \u201cThey provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers measured the volunteers\u2019 engagement in arts and culture by using a survey to determine if they had participated in any of the four following activities in 12 months: participatory arts (singing, dancing, painting, crafting, photographing), receptive arts (attending art exhibitions), visiting heritage sites (historic parks, historic buildings, monuments) or engaging in other cultural activities (museums, libraries or archives). <\/p>\n Engagement in arts and culture was also evaluated by the frequency and diversity of activities. The study noted that the diversity of activities was just as important as the frequency of engagement. Participants were also asked to record their engagement in sports-related activities, such as swimming, running, cycling, fishing or yoga and pilates. <\/p>\n The researchers used blood samples from the participants to analyze their biological age. <\/p>\n \u201cWe found in this study that \u2018arts engagement\u2019 was related to 4% slower aging rates, meaning people were about a year younger, biologically, if they were regularly engaged in the arts,\u201d Fancourt told NPR<\/a>. \u201cThis is actually the same reduction in biological aging that we saw for physical activity.\u201d <\/p>\n South_agency via Getty Images<\/p>\n “These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level,” Daisy Fancourt, a lead author of the study and professor of psychobiology & epidemiology at the University College London told The Guardian. <\/p>\n The average age of the participants was 52.1. The findings were stronger for the adults aged 40 and above, the study states. <\/p>\n The authors pointed out several of the study\u2019s limitations. For starters, the participants were asked to self-report their engagement in arts and culture, which could introduce bias. <\/p>\n Additionally, Eamonn Mallon<\/a>, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Leicester, who was not involved with the study, told CNN<\/a> that it\u2019s important to note that while the study entails \u201ccarefully conducted\u201d research, it\u2019s \u201cpossible that people who are biologically younger for their chronological age are simply more likely to get out and do things.\u201d <\/p>\n Feifei Bu<\/a>, a co-author of the study and research fellow at University College London, told The Guardian that the study builds on \u201ca growing body of evidence about the health impact of the arts.\u201d <\/p>\n Arts activities have been \u201cshown to reduce stress, lower inflammation and improve cardiovascular <\/a>disease risk<\/a>, just as exercise is known to do,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Researchers have emphasized that engaging in hobbies and mentally stimulating activities in adulthood could have many positive health benefits \u2014 including benefits to your cognitive health. <\/p>\n A study published in 2025 found that older adults who regularly listened to or played music had a lower risk of developing dementia<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Dr. Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh<\/a>, a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist at Yale Medicine in Connecticut, previously emphasized to HuffPost<\/a>: \u201cBeing cognitively active throughout one\u2019s life can have a protective role\u201d in brain health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art lovers rejoice: A new study suggests that engaging with art and culture may help slow biological aging.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[199888,6225,6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-584880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-aging-health","tag-arts","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""These](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6a0620011d00005b7da13b2e.jpeg\")
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