If you look a little old for your age, that doesn't necessarily
mean you have poor health, a new study finds. The finding
challenges a long-held idea, said researchers from St. Michael's
Hospital in Canada. "Physicians have simply assumed that their
quick assessment of how old a person looks has diagnostic
value," Dr. Stephen Hwang, a research scientist at St. Michael's
and an associate professor at the University of Toronto, said in
a statement. "We were really surprised to find that people have
to look a decade older than their actual age before it's a
reliable sign that they're in poor health." Ninety-nine percent
of people who look 10 or more years older than their age have
poor mental or physical health, the study found. [Related:
Images Show How Exercise Affects Aging ] The researchers had 126
people ages 30 to 70 fill out a questionnaire that scored their
physical and mental health. Then they took photos of the
patients and gave them to 58 doctors to assess how old the
patients looked. Doctors then gue