Volunteering – for as little as one hour a week – is linked to slower biological aging, a new study from Washington University found[1].
Biological age measures how old our cells and tissues are, relative to our actual age in years. Using data from the national Health and Retirement Study, researchers analysed the self-reports of 2,605 Americans aged 62 years and older. They examined how often participants volunteered, noted if they were working or retired, and determined their biological age using five advanced tools to measure the wear and tear on their DNA, at a cellular level.
Volunteers aged slower than non-volunteers
The researchers coded volunteering frequency into three categories – low (1-49 hours per year), moderate (50-199 hours per year); and high (200+ hours a year). People who volunteered – particularly at the lowest and highest frequencies – demonstrated slower biological aging compared to those who did not volunteer. The benefit of moderate volunteering was strongest for retired people, as compared to those currently in the workforce. However, volunteering more than 200 hours a year was associated with the greatest slowing of biological ageing, independent of work status. The authors also looked at the cumulative number of volunteering hours over two years, and found that any level of continuous or longer-term engagement reported a positive impact on cellular ageing.
To volunteer, you must be in good health, feel positive about your community, and have free time and income; thus, it could be some other factor related to the type of person who volunteers that accounts for the findings. The researchers designed the study with this in mind. They tried to make the volunteer and non-volunteer groups comparable in other characteristics, and controlled for additional health variables that can slow biological ageing, including frequency of physical activity, smoking status, binge drinking, obesity and more.
A higher ‘dose’ of social, physical and purposeful interaction
So why does volunteering have such a marked effect on health and longevity? The authors speculate that volunteering may provide a sense of social and meaningful interaction, and physical activity – qualities that have been separately linked to less rapid biological ageing[2]. The pronounced benefits of moderate volunteering for retirees compared to their working counterparts, could be because working older adults are already participating sufficiently in life that any additional gains from volunteering are limited. In contrast, retiring could result in a reduction in social and purposeful interactions, and as such, leave retirees to benefit the most from volunteering. It would be interesting to assess the impact of long-term, or lifelong volunteering -say 20 or 30 years – on biological resilience.
The science of DNA ageing tests may not be mature enough to put too much weight into the data just yet. Nonetheless, the findings are consistent with previous reports that volunteering in later life is good for you[3]. Hopefully, this steady messaging can reach policymakers, and we can encourage people to volunteer more, if just for a little bit each week.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624009559?via%3Dihub#sec3
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13828; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159123002660; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36966357/
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306453022003419