Manage your stress
Stress can affect your hormones, not only your mental health. “Stress and stress-associated hormones have aging effects,” explains Dr. Lamb. Researchers found that the cells of the people who had a depression aged more quickly than those who hadn’t. “[P]sychological distress … has a large, detrimental impact on the wear and tear of a person’s body, resulting in accelerated biological aging,” one of the study’s authors explained in a news release.