Although it is good for the elderly to show courage in everything, overconfidence about their health can sometimes be dangerous. According to scientists from the University of Vienna and the Horti School in Berlin, this advice also applies to young people. They believe that overconfidence in one's health leads to a kind of indifference.
Sonja Speiser and Mujahid Shaikh are associated with this experiment and have examined 80,000 people in Europe who were over 50 years old.
However, in middle-aged and elderly people, a false sense of self-confidence about one's health also has some benefits, such as being more leader-like and earning more money. But because they believe in their health, they do less exercise, do not take care of food, are addicted to cigarettes and alcohol, and do not care about sleep.
That is why elderly people can often ignore the symptoms that cause diseases in self-esteem. Then the research showed that people who are careless about their health have a 21 percent higher rate of visits to doctors than the general population.
Experts have reviewed a database of 80,000 Europeans called the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe. It involved a series of questionnaires filled out by participants between 2006 and 2013.
Several experiments have been conducted to find out how elderly people have accurate health awareness, over-confidence, or under-confidence about their health.
It found that 79 percent of people have an accurate assessment of their health and physical condition, but 11 percent were over-comprehensive and the remaining 10 percent were over-concerned about their health. Among them, experts have described complacency or overconfidence about health as dangerous to health and life.