Presidents of the US, it seems, age right before our eyes. Their faces, creased and drawn, are road maps of wars and natural disasters and economic calamity. Tufts of grey hair bear testament to a job framed by unremitting pressure and unrelenting criticism.
Stressed out? Is accelerated ageing in the highest executive office in the country inevitable? Almost certainly, say some specialists in ageing and politics. You look at someone going into office and then coming out of office, and they all look beat up, they say.
A vibrant Jimmy Carter beamed with optimism when he assumed the post in January 1977. As he departed four years later, he was wan and pinched, the legacy of hostages in Iran and energy shortages at home—a cautionary tale for President-elect Barack Obama.
But is accelerated ageing in the Oval Office inevitable?
Almost certainly, say some specialists in ageing and politics. The pounding stress of the job can unleash biological forces that translate into wrinkles, grey hair, weight fluctuation—and sometimes even premature death, although there is far from universal agreement on the long-term health effects of the presidency.
Michael Roizen, who has written extensively on ageing, said a formula he helped develop suggests that for every year in office, the average president ages two years.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re Democrats or Republicans, it doesn’t matter if they’ve been athletes or not beforehand, it doesn’t matter if they were smokers or not,” said Dr Roizen, chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic. “For eight years in office, they age 16 years.”
Dr Roizen’s analysis, which examines presidents from Theodore Roosevelt forward, relies on medical documents presidents made available before being elected and details from annual check-ups while in office. It includes medical factors such as blood pressure and weight and behaviours such as smoking and exercise.
Using his widely publicized “Real Age” formula, Dr Roizen then calculated each president’s risk of death and disability before he was elected and after his term had ended. The results showed a consistent acceleration of ageing among presidents, said Dr Roizen, who has sometimes faced criticism from peers for his outspoken views on human ageing.
Others measure the health toll of the presidency not in grey hairs and wrinkles, but in life expectancy. In his book The Mortal Presidency, Boston, Massachusetts-based Northeastern University political scientist Robert E. Gilbert reports that presidents, on average, have shorter lifespans than members of Congress or the Supreme Court. And when he examined the ages at which presidents from Washington to Nixon died, Gilbert concluded that 25 of 36 died earlier than would have been predicted using the sort of life expectancy data that insurance firms rely on.