Life Strain, Negative Emotions, and Religious Involvement in Contemporary China.

Explaining religious growth in China remains a challenge for social scientists. Research on Western nations establishes religion as a powerful resource for coping with life strain. However, China's sociopolitical context, which often treats religion as deviant, is thought to function as a deterrent to conversion. When individuals experience life strain, they respond with negative emotions. Because those who experience strain may turn to non-traditional and deviant activities, we argue that they will be less deterred by China's negative framing of religion when seeking resources for coping. Applying lagged dependent variable models to the 2012-2014 China Family Panel Study, we find that life strain is associated with increases in religious affiliation, service attendance, and salience. Further analyses show that negative emotions mediate the effects of life strain on religiosity. Our study makes a substantial contribution to multiple bodies of literature by applying a theory of deviance to the study of religion, modernization, and mental health.

Interaction Between the FOXO1A-209 Genotype and Tea Drinking Is Significantly Associated with Reduced Mortality at Advanced Ages.

On the basis of the genotypic/phenotypic data from Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) and Cox proportional hazard model, the present study demonstrates that interactions between carrying FOXO1A-209 genotypes and tea drinking are significantly associated with lower risk of mortality at advanced ages. Such a significant association is replicated in two independent Han Chinese CLHLS cohorts (p = 0.028-0.048 in the discovery and replication cohorts, and p = 0.003-0.016 in the combined dataset). We found the associations between tea drinking and reduced mortality are much stronger among carriers of the FOXO1A-209 genotype compared to non-carriers, and drinking tea is associated with a reversal of the negative effects of carrying FOXO1A-209 minor alleles, that is, from a substantially increased mortality risk to substantially reduced mortality risk at advanced ages. The impacts are considerably stronger among those who carry two copies of the FOXO1A minor allele than those who carry one copy. On the basis of previously reported experiments on human cell models concerning FOXO1A-by-tea-compounds interactions, we speculate that results in the present study indicate that tea drinking may inhibit FOXO1A-209 gene expression and its biological functions, which reduces the negative impacts of FOXO1A-209 gene on longevity (as reported in the literature) and offers protection against mortality risk at oldest-old ages. Our empirical findings imply that the health outcomes of particular nutritional interventions, including tea drinking, may, in part, depend upon individual genetic profiles, and the research on the effects of nutrigenomics interactions could potentially be useful for rejuvenation therapies in the clinic or associated healthy aging intervention programs.

GxE interactions between FOXO genotypes and drinking tea are significantly associated with prevention of cognitive decline in advanced age in China.

Logistic regression analysis based on data from 822 Han Chinese oldest old aged 92+ demonstrated that interactions between carrying FOXO1A-266 or FOXO3-310 or FOXO3-292 and tea drinking at around age 60 or at present time were significantly associated with lower risk of cognitive disability at advanced ages. Associations between tea drinking and reduced cognitive disability were much stronger among carriers of the genotypes of FOXO1A-266 or FOXO3-310 or FOXO3-292 compared with noncarriers, and it was reconfirmed by analysis of three-way interactions across FOXO genotypes, tea drinking at around age 60, and at present time. Based on prior findings from animal and human cell models, we postulate that intake of tea compounds may activate FOXO gene expression, which in turn may positively affect cognitive function in the oldest old population. Our empirical findings imply that the health benefits of particular nutritional interventions, including tea drinking, may, in part, depend upon individual genetic profiles.

Tea consumption and mortality in the oldest-old Chinese.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the association between tea consumption and mortality in the oldest-old Chinese. DESIGN: Population-based longitudinal data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) were analyzed using a Cox semiparametric proportional hazard model. SETTING: Six hundred thirty-one randomly selected counties and cities of China's 22 provinces. PARTICIPANTS: Individuals aged 80 and older (N = 9,093) who provided complete data in the baseline survey (1998). MEASUREMENTS: Self-reported current frequency of tea drinking and past frequency at approximately age 60 were ascertained at baseline survey; a follow-up survey was conducted 2000, 2002, and 2005. RESULTS: In the oldest-old Chinese, tea consumption was associated with lower risk of mortality after adjusting for demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, health practices, and health status. Compared with non-tea drinkers, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) was 0.90 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.84-0.96) for daily tea drinkers (at the baseline survey, 1998) and 1.00 (95% CI = 1.01-1.07) for occasional tea drinkers (P for linear trend .003). Similar results were found when tea drinking status at age 60 was used in the analysis. Further analysis showed that subjects who reported frequent tea drinking at age 60 and at the baseline survey had a 10% lower risk of mortality than subjects who reported infrequent tea drinking at age 60 and at the baseline survey (HR = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.84-0.97). CONCLUSION: Tea consumption is associated with lower risk of mortality in the oldest-old Chinese.