The Younger You Look, the Longer You'll Live

At least that's what Danish researchers concluded after testing 1,800 pairs of twins over the age of 70. The investigators performed physical and cognitive tests on the twins and also took their photos. Then three separate groups of people who didn't know the twins' year of birth looked at photos of the twins' faces and guessed their ages. The researchers tracked the twins for the next seven years and found that the ones who had looked younger than their actual age were much more likely to still be living, even after adjusting for such factors as gender and environment. The researchers also found that the bigger the difference in perceived age within any set of twins, the more likely it was that the older looking sibling died first. The only biological explanation advanced was that the individuals who looked younger also tended to have longer telomeres (repeating DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes) that are linked to aging. Individuals with shorter telomeres are thought to age faster - in this study, the more fresh-faced individuals had longer telomeres. The findings were published online on December 14 in the British medical journal BMJ.