AXE AGEING LIKE JAGGER
Finally, a scientific explanation for the Rolling Stones’ longevity: live music adds candles to your cake
We reveal the front-row ticket to turn back your body clock and amp up your lifespan
Jagger, Richards, Wood and Watts: these legends of live performance continue to fill out arenas and gyrate with unfathomable intensity well into their seventies. But the secret to their snake-hipped durability may have finally been revealed.
Previous research had proved that music positively impacts the autonomic nervous system, which controls your blood pressure and heartbeat, and the limbic system, responsible for your emotions. Put simply, it can lead to feelings of mental and physical euphoria. But now, a study by Goldsmiths, University of London, has reported that regularly going to gigs can also significantly amp up your lifespan.
The researchers performed psychometric tests on subjects who had participated in various “wellbeing” activities and found that feelings of happiness increased by 21% after watching a live music performance, whereas yoga and dog walking resulted in boosts of just 10% and 7%, respectively. Crucially, it was the active experience of engaging with the music – not simply plugging into Spotify on your commute – that generated this effect. Weighing up this data against a body of recent evidence connecting subjective wellbeing to longevity, the study’s authors concluded that going to a gig every fortnight could add up to nine years to your life.
While wellbeing is a difficult term to pin down, these longevity boons may have been explained by Harvard researchers, who reported that life satisfaction and happiness are associated with a reduced risk of heart disease and stroke, conditions that account for over a third of all UK deaths each year – yet another reason to turn it up to 11.