Happiness Adjusted Age Relative To Chronological Age?

Submitted by tonyplant on November 27, 2006 - 20:50.

There are several age-adjusted health scales used to horrify or shame us about our lifestyle choices and health. Real Age claims to calculate the biological age of your body, based on how well you maintain it. HeartAge can be used to tell a 42-year-old man that after a cardiovascular risk-adjustment, he has the heart of a 70-year-old man. There are anxiety and depression scores and quality of life scores. I'd like to propose an risk-adjusted happiness and resilience score for age. Imagine hearing, "You have the body of a 23-year-old but your lifestyle choices and general grumpiness gives you the Mind-Body score of 58-year old".

HeartAge is a novel use of the Framingham Heart Score: it has been reported in Patients' Perceptions of Cholesterol, Cardiovascular Disease Risk, and Risk Communication Strategies. A series of focus groups compared three strategies for communicating cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Participants saw three visual displays that represented the CVD risk for a 42-year-old man with a Framingham Heart Score that predicted a 25% probability for a CVD event within the next 10 years. A crowd chart showed 100 stick figures with 25 of them shaded to indicate the proportion predicted to have a CVD event over the next 10- years: this was contrasted with a similar chart for a same-aged man with no risk factors (1 figure shaded). Similarly, this same information was compared and contrasted in a simple bar graph. The HeartAge was also presented as a chart. But this time, a horizontal bar chart represented age. The first bar depicted the chronological age (42 years);

the second bar showed how this individual compared with the average age of a same-sex person in the Framingham Heart Study having the same 10-year probability of experiencing a CHD event. For the demonstration case, the 42-year-old had the same risk as a 70-year-old.

Analysis of the participants' reactions and responses revealed that the standard visual representations that show statistical probabilities of risk are confusing and uninspiring. However, a strategy that provides a cardiovascular risk-adjusted age calculation was

evaluated as clear, memorable, relevant, and potentially capable of motivating people to make healthful changes.

The BODE index is gaining in popularity for assessing people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). BODE is a combination of physical and physiological indices and measurements: it can be used in conjunction with quality of life questionnaires to present a full picture of a patient's health and well-being.

There are indices for disease and disability: there are questionnaires and scores for quality of life. There are measures of hostility and aggression that are used to identify those who may be at risk for particular symptoms and diseases. There are even short versions of a Resilience Scale. If positive psychology is to persuade people of the physical, cognitive and emotional health benefits of authentic happiness, then perhaps we need a Mind-Body Age or a Hearts and Minds Age: a risk-adjusted calculation that evaluates the harm of depression, chronic unhappiness, lack of meaning in life or poor engagement with work and studies; and evaluates the benefits of resilience, the experience of flow and engagement with work and studies, and the value of a rich social network of friends and family.

Research estimates that positive emotion is linked to greater success, better health and recovery from illness and greater longevity. When was the last time we scheduled time for cultivating pleasure, engagement and meaning in the same we that we promise ourselves to cultivate fitness by visiting the gym or a salad bar rather than a burger franchise at lunchtime? If we knew our Hearts and Minds Age, would we accept the reality of the benefits of authentic happiness and, more importantly, do something about it? If there were a Hearts and Minds Age, how many of us would be confident that it would be lower than our chronological age?

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project

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