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Slowing Clock

The scientific basis of why trying to attract a mate can age a person is interesting but this is self-evident. There is a lot of stress involved in finding the right partner no matter which way a person goes about it. That and the lack of a stable domestic life can wear the person out, make them age. In a stable partnership, those stressor fade away and people are likely to be happier and healthier leading to slower aging.

Evolutionary biology predicts that investing in reproduction causes aging indirectly. Imagine that your body has protective mechanisms which can let you live longer, but that they’re energetically costly. Evolutionary theories of aging would say that there’s a trade-off between investing energy into those mechanisms, or into reproduction. Animals in the wild suffer high levels of mortality from things like predators and accidents, so are unlikely to live to late ages. So it makes sense for them to invest heavily in reproduction, even if that accelerates the aging process, because they will usually be dead by the time aging occurs anyway.

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