New study suggests that caregiving for elderly parents helps extend caregiver lifespan

Boomers sandwiched between growing childrenand ailing aging parents often worry that the stress from all thatcaregiving might shave years off their lives. But it turns out that theopposite may be true — the nurturing they give may be repaid by alonger lifespan, a study shows.  Earlierstudies found that people who had cared for sick relatives died at ayounger age than people who didn’t help. But researchers from theUniversity of Michigan suspected the caregiving wasn’t the problem.  “Wethought that it wasn’t the helping that was harmful, and that the harmseen in those studies came from watching someone die,” says studyauthor Stephanie Brown, a social psychologist and an assistantprofessor in the department of internal medicine at the University ofMichigan.

Source/more:  MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30565985/