Greater cultural engagement can improve blood pressure and other health markers
Promoting cultural activities may help support healthy ageing in older adults
Higher levels of cultural engagement are significantly associated with lower physiological ageing, suggests an analysis published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Ageing is universal but not everyone experiences it in the same way. A person's physiological age – a measure that reflects how well the body functions – can be different from their chronological age.
Cultural engagement, such as going to the cinema, museum, or theatre, has been widely associated with improved health outcomes and enhanced well-being amongst older adults.
But few studies have directly looked at the relationship between cultural engagement and physiological ageing or related markers.
Researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo in Japan believe they have conducted the first longitudinal study examining the association between cultural engagement and physiological age, while controlling for unmeasured confounding factors that do not change over time.
They analysed data on 1899 adults who took part in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing – an ongoing population based study that follows a nationally representative sample of adults aged 50 or older living in England.
The participants had to have data collected on at least two occasions – in 2004/2005, 2006/2007, or 2008/2009.
Nurses collected data on 10 physiological markers – pulse pressure, diastolic blood pressure, forced expiratory volume, haemoglobin concentration, fibrinogen, glycated haemoglobin, low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), grip strength and walking speed. This data was used to produce a composite physiological age score.
The study participants also completed a questionnaire which asked how often they went to (a) the cinema, (b) a museum or art gallery and (c) a theatre, concert or the opera. For each item, respondents selected on a scale from 0 (never) to 5 (twice a month or more) to produce a composite cultural engagement score ranging from 0 to 15.
Those with high levels of cultural engagement (doing something cultural every few months or more) had a physiological age of 66.9 years, three years lower than those with lower levels of cultural engagement (69.9 years), the study found.
Those individuals with higher levels of cultural engagement were more likely to be women, have higher socioeconomic status, be in paid employment and have better health conditions.
An analysis found that a one point higher cultural engagement score was significantly associated with a 0.085-year (31 days) lower physiological age after adjusting for confounding factors such as household income, employment and chronic health conditions.
The study authors suggest that cultural engagement can strengthen social relationships, promote healthier lifestyle behaviours and improve mental health, all of which may help slow the pace of physiological ageing.
The study is observational, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. And the study authors acknowledge that the findings could be explained by reverse causation whereby those individuals in better health are more able to take part in cultural activities.
Nevertheless, they say that cultural engagement is modifiable and might be an effective intervention. "Notably, the impact can be comparable to frequent physical activity," they write.
They say increasing geographical and financial accessibility to cultural events would expand opportunities for participation.
Further studies were needed to evaluate whether promoting cultural engagement led to improvements in health outcomes and healthy ageing in the long term, they added.
