Telomeres are the highlighted yellow areas on chromosomes. Click to read more about the research (US Department of Energy, via University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center)

We read the other day that a British company is planning to begin producing a blood test that can measure how quickly you’re aging – and maybe even predict how long you’ll live. What a thought: The Big Question now answerable.

The test, and similar ones already available in the U.S., is based on breakthrough research on telomeres – the ends of your chromosomes, which shorten every time your cells divide. The shorter your telomeres, the older your biological age.

The costly ($650) and controversial test would be able to tell if your body is older or younger than your chronological age, and that could help predict your potential lifespan.

Having a test like this raises all kinds of intriguing possibilities – and potential controversies. It potentially could help doctors treat patients. But critics worry results could be misused by insurance companies.

Would you want to know?

RELATED LINKS

May 16, 2011, The Independent, “The £400 test that tells how long you’ll live.”

May 17, 2011, Washington Post, The Checkup blog, “Telomere test could predict how long you’ll live”

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(David Boraks/DavidsonNews.net photo)

SOURCE: Psychological Science

Can a big smile help you live longer? A new study published in the journal Psychological Science says people who smile in photographs live longer than those who don’t. Smiles can be a barometer of emotions, according to Wayne State University researchers, and can help predict longevity.

The researchers examined a database of baseball players and found that people who smile in photographs live longer than those who don’t.

It’s the first study to find a link between smile intensity and a biological outcome.

Facial expressions are a barometer of emotions. Just as emotions vary in form and intensity, facial expressions do, too, so it’s possible to use facial expressions to gauge another person’s emotional state. How we express these emotions can also greatly affect our lives. Previous research has shown that women with more intense smiles were more likely to stay married.

For this study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger took photographs of 230 players from the 1952 Baseball Register and blew them up to fit on 3×5 file cards. Five people each went through the deck of cards, rating each athlete’s expression as: no smile; a partial smile, in which only the corners of the mouth were lifted; or a full smile, in which the corners of the mouth and the corners of the eyes moved.

The researchers used a database of players to compare smile intensity to longevity, controlling for several factors, including how long they played baseball, whether they had a college education, and body-mass index. All but 46 had died by the time the study began, in 2009. The researchers found that the players with broad smile lived an average of five years longer than players who didn’t smile. Even baseball players with partial smiles did better than players who managed no smile at all.

A broad smile – in which the corners of the eyes move – is hard to fake. “Some people are able to really smile and some people just don’t have it in them,” Mr. Abel said. That happiness seems to carry over to a longer life.

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As a lifelong athlete now past the 50 mark, the aches and pains that follow my Sunday morning pickup soccer games are a constant reminder of the limitations that come with aging. As I try to keep up with teens and twenty-somethings on the field, my brain remembers what I once could do; my body can’t do it it any longer. Pass the ibuprofen, please.

Some men think there’s another answer: hormones. The Sunday, Jan. 17, New York Times Magazine, has an article about a Sunday morning soccer player about my age – 51-year-old John Bellizzi – who uses vitamins and hormone injections to stay in the game. But, there are risks, the magazine notes.

“This notion of ‘we’re getting old; it’s bound to happen’ doesn’t make any sense to me,” Bellizzi says in the article “I don’t think I’m so far out on the edge here that I’m gambling with my life. What I do know is I feel better.”

A related article on in the Los Angeles Times Monday, Jan. 18, also raises questions about hormone treatments by taking a look back at some of the research. “Long-term studies on effectiveness of the therapy are lacking, and the few small, shorter-term trials that exist have produced mixed results,” the article says.

LINKS

Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010, Tom Dunkel, New York Times Magazine, “Vigor Quest.” “John Bellizzi, like a growing number of well-off men, injects himself with a hormone to forestall the aging process. Does it work, or is it enough that he simply thinks it does?”

Monday, Jan. 18, 2010, Los Angeles Times, “Benefits of testosterone, HGH on aging unclear”. “The treatments are popular with older men, but the lack of long-term studies and potential safety risks including diabetes and cardiovascular problems have provoked controversy.”

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