Dealing with major stress helps older adults cope up with day-to-day troubles: study

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If a person feels as tough as nails, chances are he or she has gone through at least one major stressful event in life, which has then given him or her a lifetime benefit of better handling stressful day to day activities.

A new study conducted by researchers from North Carolina State University and published in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences reveals that older adults who have dealt with major stressful events in their lives were better able to deal with everyday nuances, Eurekalert reports.

For the study, researchers asked 43 adults aged 60 to 96 to answer a questionnaire for eight consecutive days, indicating any stress they experienced throughout the day, and three age-related questions: how old they felt, how old they would like to be, and how old they thought they looked. These three questions revealed that those who had experienced major stressors in their life had a different response to daily stress than those who did not experience stressful life events. For the study, stressful events were defined as a household move, a divorce, a death, a marriage, or an illness.

Daily Mail reports that according to Jennifer Bellingtier, a Ph.D. candidate at NC State and lead author of the paper, "They were much more stable in response to day-to-day stress."

Interestingly, participants also had different perceptions of themselves age-wise on days that were stressful and not stressful. Participants from both groups (those who experienced major stress and those who did not) reported that they looked 10 years younger on days that were not stressful. On stressful days, however, those who experienced major stress believed that they looked more than 20 years younger than they were, and those who did not experience major stress thought they looked their age.

"We were quite surprised to find that individuals who had experienced a major life event stressor thought they looked younger on days with daily stressors," Dr. Bellingtier told Medical Daily.

However, researchers noted that both groups wished they were younger. Dr. Bellingtier said, "Everyone's 'look age' was impacted by daily stressors. It seems that it would be preferable to shift towards a more youthful appearance."

"We are now considering how people's attitudes about their ageing (i.e. feeling positive or negative about changes related to ageing) influence an individual's response to stressors," she explained. "We see ageing attitudes as comparable to major life-event stressors, in that they may function as important background factors that impact how individuals respond to stressors."

She concluded, "Our preliminary findings indicate that individuals with more negative attitudes respond with more intense negative feelings following a stressor."