A new study has found that enjoying art—whether experiencing it or making it yourself—can be correlated to slowing the biological aging process, with the “same effect on aging as a weekly workout,” reports the Times of London (Anyone who recently spent a week tramping across Venice from one exhibit to the next would have to agree.) Researchers from University College London (UCL) found that at least a weekly dose of art—preferably of diverse forms and types—made people on average about a year younger, as suggested by changes to DNA and in terms of overall health, than those who rarely treated themselves to the creative arts. In fact, the study, published in Innovation in Aging , concluded that the artsy group appeared to age as much as 4 percent slower than their counterparts, with similar effects to those of a weekly workout. (It should be noted that those who benefited most from their art-injection were over 40, and the study was done on 3,556 adults in the UK.) “These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level. They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognized as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise,” said Daisy Fancourt , the study’s lead author from UCL’s Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
