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Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study
BACKGROUND: Healthy aging is particularly important in women, as their life-span is generally longer than men’s, leaving women at higher risk for age-related diseases. Understanding determinants of women’s healthy aging is therefore a major public health interest. Clinical utility of previous resear...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988289/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31996204 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-020-0888-x |
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author | Fiacco, Serena Mernone, Laura Ehlert, Ulrike |
author_facet | Fiacco, Serena Mernone, Laura Ehlert, Ulrike |
author_sort | Fiacco, Serena |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Healthy aging is particularly important in women, as their life-span is generally longer than men’s, leaving women at higher risk for age-related diseases. Understanding determinants of women’s healthy aging is therefore a major public health interest. Clinical utility of previous research is limited, through its focus on either single psychosocial or biological predictors. The present study investigated psychobiological predictors of women’s healthy aging, for the first time including positive psychological traits and biomarkers of healthy aging. METHODS: Totally, 121 generally healthy women aged 40 to 75 were investigated cross-sectionally. Healthy aging was operationalized via self-rated health (SRH). To gain a nuanced view of the particularities at the upper end of the illness-wellness continuum, women with excellent SRH and those with good SRH were analyzed as distinct groups. Socioeconomic and sociodemographic variables, health behavior, resilience, optimism, and self-worth as well as menopausal symptoms, and levels of steroid hormones and gonadotropins were considered as predictors of SRH. Binary logistic regression analyses using the forward conditional method were performed with the two health status groups as dependent variable. RESULTS: Women with a lower body mass index (BMI; OR = .59, 95% CI = .33–1.03), higher intensive physical activity (OR = 2.27, 95% CI = 1.06–4.86), and higher resilience (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 1.34–4.18) were more likely to rate their health as excellent compared to good. No clinically significant differences could be found regarding endocrine levels. CONCLUSION: Psychobiological indicators (lower BMI, intensive physical activity, higher resilience) discriminated SRH at the top level of the health spectrum. In healthy women, the predictive value of endocrine markers seems to be secondary. Interventions targeting these indicators could promote women’s healthy aging. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6988289 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-69882892020-01-31 Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study Fiacco, Serena Mernone, Laura Ehlert, Ulrike BMC Womens Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Healthy aging is particularly important in women, as their life-span is generally longer than men’s, leaving women at higher risk for age-related diseases. Understanding determinants of women’s healthy aging is therefore a major public health interest. Clinical utility of previous research is limited, through its focus on either single psychosocial or biological predictors. The present study investigated psychobiological predictors of women’s healthy aging, for the first time including positive psychological traits and biomarkers of healthy aging. METHODS: Totally, 121 generally healthy women aged 40 to 75 were investigated cross-sectionally. Healthy aging was operationalized via self-rated health (SRH). To gain a nuanced view of the particularities at the upper end of the illness-wellness continuum, women with excellent SRH and those with good SRH were analyzed as distinct groups. Socioeconomic and sociodemographic variables, health behavior, resilience, optimism, and self-worth as well as menopausal symptoms, and levels of steroid hormones and gonadotropins were considered as predictors of SRH. Binary logistic regression analyses using the forward conditional method were performed with the two health status groups as dependent variable. RESULTS: Women with a lower body mass index (BMI; OR = .59, 95% CI = .33–1.03), higher intensive physical activity (OR = 2.27, 95% CI = 1.06–4.86), and higher resilience (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 1.34–4.18) were more likely to rate their health as excellent compared to good. No clinically significant differences could be found regarding endocrine levels. CONCLUSION: Psychobiological indicators (lower BMI, intensive physical activity, higher resilience) discriminated SRH at the top level of the health spectrum. In healthy women, the predictive value of endocrine markers seems to be secondary. Interventions targeting these indicators could promote women’s healthy aging. BioMed Central 2020-01-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6988289/ /pubmed/31996204 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-020-0888-x Text en © The Author(s). 2020 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Fiacco, Serena Mernone, Laura Ehlert, Ulrike Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study |
title | Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study |
title_full | Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study |
title_fullStr | Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study |
title_short | Psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the Women 40+ Healthy Aging Study |
title_sort | psychobiological indicators of the subjectively experienced health status - findings from the women 40+ healthy aging study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6988289/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31996204 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-020-0888-x |
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