Florida is the dream retirement destination for millions of Americans.
Sunshine and warm weather are a wonderful way for retirees to spend their golden years.
But one terrible downside to retiring in Florida was revealed by a scary new study.
Extreme heat can cause people to age faster
Florida has been a popular retirement destination for decades because of its warm weather, beaches, and sunshine.
The state also boasts no income tax, which helps seniors living on a fixed income make their dollars go further.
For all the benefits of retirees spending their golden years in Florida, there is a downside.
A recent study published in Science Advances found that extreme heat can be harder on older people.
The study of 3,600 people over the age of 56 found that extreme heat, classified as 90 degrees or higher, found that aging happened faster at the molecular level.
Being exposed to extreme heat on a regular basis is comparable to smoking, according to the study.
A person’s biological age can increase by almost 2.5 years because of extreme heat.
The study even had controls for variables like exercise, lifestyle, drinking, and smoking.
“Participants living in areas where heat days…occur half the year, such as Phoenix, Arizona, experienced up to 14 months of additional biological aging compared to those living in areas with fewer than 10 heat days per year,” USC postdoctoral scholar Eunyoung Choi, one of the study’s authors, said.
“Even after controlling for several factors, we found this association. Just because you live in an area with more heat days, you’re aging faster biologically,” Choi added.
The study looked at the blood of participants to make the determination.
Harvard professor of social epidemiology Nancy Krieger called the study “important” but added that there are other factors at play.
Even the study’s authors conclude that extreme heat and aging appear to be connected, but they did not prove it was a definitive cause.
“Our finding doesn’t necessarily mean that every person living in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, has an older biological age. This is really an average impact,” Choi stated. “Two people in the same neighborhood could have very different levels of personal exposure depending on whether they have air conditioning.”
Extreme heat can be dangerous for older people
USC gerontology professor Jennifer Ailshire, the study’s lead author, warned that extreme heat can be dangerous for the elderly.
She said that humidity plays a major factor, along with temperature, in how people handle heat.
Aging changes how people sweat and makes it harder for them to keep cool.
“It’s really about the combination of heat and humidity, particularly for older adults, because older adults don’t sweat the same way,” Ailshire explained. “We start to lose our ability to have the skin-cooling effect that comes from that evaporation of sweat.”
“If you’re in a high-humidity place, you don’t get as much of that cooling effect,” Ailshire added. “You have to look at your area’s temperature and your humidity to really understand what your risk might be.”
Many Americans would rather risk the effects of heat in Florida than spend another winter in the snow.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
