• Posted February 11, 2026

Worried About Getting Older? You Could Be Contributing To Your Own Accelerated Aging, Study Says

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 11, 2026 (HealthDay news) — They say worrying will give you wrinkles, but a new study indicates that might be an understatement.

Women anxious about getting older appear to experience accelerated aging, with their fears promoting quicker decline at the cellular level, researchers found.

In essence, fears about aging cause a person’s body to grow old faster than what their actual birth date reflects, researchers concluded in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

“Our research suggests that subjective experiences may be driving objective measures of aging,” lead researcher Mariana Rodrigues said in a news release. She’s a doctoral student at the NYU School of Global Public Health in New York City.

“Aging-related anxiety is not merely a psychological concern, but may leave a mark on the body with real health consequences,” Rodrigues said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed data from 726 women participating in a study of middle-aged people in the United States.

From their data, the research team calculated their biological aging — their age based on the wear-and-tear their bodies have experienced.

The researchers compared this biological age to their calendar age, and then assessed whether anxiety over growing older had contributed to accelerated aging.

“Women in midlife may also be multiple in roles, including caring for their aging parents. As they see older family members grow older and become sick, they may worry about whether the same thing will happen to them,” Rodrigues said.

Results showed that higher levels of anxiety over getting older were indeed significantly associated with accelerated aging.

Worrying about declining health had the strongest association with accelerated biological aging, researchers said.

On the other hand, anxiety over declining attractiveness and fertility were not associated with accelerated aging, researchers said. That might be because health-related concerns persist over time, while worries about beauty and fertility can fade with age.

The results are a fresh reminder that mental and physical health are tightly connected across a person’s lifespan, researchers said.

“Our research identifies aging anxiety as a measurable and modifiable psychological determinant that seems to be shaping aging biology,” senior researcher Adolfo Cuevas, an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at NYU School of Global Public Health, said in a news release.

However, the researchers noted that they couldn’t rule out that other factors might also influence the speed at which a person ages.

For example, anxiety might cause a person to cope through unhealthy habits like drinking or smoking, researchers said. In fact, when researchers adjusted their analysis to account for such behaviors, the association between anxiety and rapid aging decreased.

More studies are needed to further explore this potential effect of anxiety, researchers said.

“Aging is a universal experience,” Rodrigues said. “We need to start a discourse about how we as a society — through our norms, structural factors and interpersonal relationships — address the challenges of aging.”

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on health anxiety.

SOURCE: New York University, news release, Feb. 9, 2026