Ready to be spooked?
According to a 30-year Harvard study, doing these simple and effective things can drastically extend your longevity Here’s a chilling statistic for you. According to the CDC, (Centre for Disease control and prevention) up to 40 percent of annual deaths in the US are preventable. Their causes range from unintentional injuries to heart disease.
More terrifying still is that this percentage is estimated to increase in the future. And even if we manage to reach old age, perhaps we’ll have to endure diseases that significantly reduce the quality of our days. As Norman Lazarus, an octogenarian doctor famous for his enviable health, says in his book, The Lazarus Strategy, “the number of people living with four or more diseases will nearly double between the years of 2015 and 2035.”
The cause?
Our habits.
Our largely sedentary lifestyles coupled with increased pollution and diets loaded with sugar and processed foods are endangering the quality of our twilight years (if we even reach them), an undesirable fate for most of us. After all, what’s the point of living to old age if everything hurts or if you can’t remember your family?
The good news is that as the CDC reports, “Many of these risks are avoidable by making changes in personal behaviors.”
But not all habits were created equal. Not all have the same impact on our future well-being.
Fortunately, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health reviewed 34 years’ worth of data from 78,000 women and 27 years’ worth from more than 44,000 men and found five habits that could prolong a person’s life by up to a decade or more.
More importantly, this extension doesn’t mean we’ll have to live with painful diseases for longer. The results showed a correlation between a healthy lifestyle and an 82% decrease in heart disease and a 65% decrease in cancer.
By introducing these habits into your life, you could extend both your lifespan and healthspan.
Maintain a Healthy Diet (Watch Out for the What and How)
You’re probably thinking: Duh!
Yes, this first one is quite obvious, but if it was included in the study, it’s because even if we know we should maintain a healthy diet, most of us don’t do it, to our detriment. Another recent study found that poor diets lead to one in five deaths, and can lead to chronic diseases that worsen our quality of life.
But what exactly is a healthy diet?
It depends. Diets vary around the world and even the microbiome of each person (the microorganisms living in our digestive tracts) is unique, which means that what’s good for someone isn’t good for another.
That said, general healthy guidelines exist. A rule of thumb is that if you avoid processed foods, vegetable oils, excessive sodium, sugary treats (soda, candy, desert), and fried foods, you’re already ahead of the majority of people in the world. Put another way, try to eat whole foods and grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and any natural source of protein (i.e., fish and beans).
Specific foods that have been lauded for their proven antiaging benefits are:
- Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale…)
- Salad greens
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Berries
- Pomegranate
- Beans
- Mushrooms
- Onions and garlic
- Tomatoes
Still, maintaining a healthy diet involves more than just what we eat. It’s also how much we eat.
Even if it comes from healthy sources, Lazarus shows in his book that a daily calorie surplus of around 300 can translate to an increase in weight of about 13 pounds per year. “Now, multiply that by 20 years. You can see the danger.”
Simply put, opt for healthy but don’t go overboard. An excess of a good thing is still an excess.
Don’t Smoke, Extend Your Lifespan
This one is also obvious yet extremely hard. Even reducing how much you smoke can already help you live a longer and healthier life.
Limit Your Alcohol Intake (and Choose Resveratrol)
Unlike smoking, alcohol doesn’t need to be completely eliminated from your life. Moderate consumption — one 16 oz. drink for women and two for men per day (better if less) according to the US government’s dietary guidelines — can be part of a life-extending lifestyle.
That said, not all drinks were created equal. When possible, opt for red wine since it’s a source of resveratrol, a polyphenol that acts as an antioxidant, protecting our bodies against damage that can lead to age-related diseases.
Avoid Inactivity A.K.A the 3-Minute Hack
“More recently, it has been suggested — by others as well as by my colleagues and myself — that most of the so-called diseases of ageing should be grouped and labelled as ‘Exercise Deficiency Diseases’.”
— Norman Lazarus
Though the World Health Organisation recommends we engage in a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise (30 minutes, 5 days per week), a recent study with more than 130.000 people across 3 countries — the largest ever done on this topic — found that what truly matters is the combination of how much time you exercise, do light activity, and sit.
In other words, the time you exercise should vary depending on the hours you spend sitting to optimize your health, which means you don’t have to follow an arbitrary guideline.
As it turns out, to prolong your lifespan by as much as 30%, you need to apply the 3-minute hack: Do 3 minutes of vigorous-to-moderate exercise (brisk walking, cycling, or anything that gets your heart rate up) for every sitting hour. Alternatively, you can do 12 minutes of light physical activity (cooking, cleaning, or anything that gets you to move) to reap the same benefits.
For example, if someone sits for 10 hours every day, they should either:
- Exercise with moderate-to-vigorous intensity for 30 minutes and spend the leftover waking hours doing light physical activity (what the researchers recommend to maximize the health benefits).
- Exercise with moderate-to-vigorous intensity for 3 minutes and engage in light physical activity (relaxed walking, shopping, among others) for 108 minutes plus whatever is left of the waking hours.
- Do 2 hours of light activity plus whatever is left of the waking hours.
That said, if you don’t have the time or energy to calculate the exact amount you should be exercising to extend your life, just push yourself to move more.
Keep a Healthy Weight (Beyond the BMI)
According to the Harvard study, “weight control significantly reduced the risk of diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular risk factors and breast cancer.” Having a healthy weight can significantly improve the quality of your life no matter your age.
But what is a healthy weight?
The most obvious answer comes in the form of the Body Mass Index (BMI), a weight-to-height ratio.
BMI chart. Source: Wikipedia commons
Someone with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.5 is considered normal. However, like with every other invention with almost 200 years, the BMI has faced its fair share of criticism for 4 primary reasons:
“1. It doesn’t give you a good estimate of how much body fat you’re carrying around.
2. It can differ drastically based solely on your gender. For example, a man and a woman with an identical body-fat percentage could have widely different BMIs.
3. Just because you have a high BMI doesn’t necessarily mean you’re overweight. You can have a high BMI even if you have very little body fat, especially if you’re male and very muscular.
4. It doesn’t take into account your waist circumference, which can be a good measure of your risk for certain diseases, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes.”
— Erin Brodwin, senior health and tech reporter at Business Insider.
So how can we determine if we’re at a healthy weight?
By measuring our waist circumference. A recent study that looked at data from more than 340,000 people from eight European countries found that overweight people with large waists — more than 34.5 inches for women and more than 40 inches for men — were at higher risk of developing age-related diseases.
That said, whether you keep track of your BMI, fat percentage, or waist circumference, it still pays to seek medical assistance to evaluate your individual case.
Other Life-Prolonging Habits Backed by Science to Extend your Lifespan
Though not included in the Harvard study, the following are other habits that have been scientifically proven to extend your life:
- Floss daily. “Toothbrushing at night before bed, using dental floss everyday, and visiting the dentist were significant risk factors for longevity,” concluded a recent study on dental hygiene and mortality. “Never brushing at night increased risk 20–35% compared with brushing everyday. Never flossing increased risk 30% compared with flossing everyday. Not seeing a dentist within the last 12 months increased risk 30–50% compared with seeing a dentist two or more times. Mortality also increased with increasing number of missing teeth.”
- Get sexy. Having an active sex life no matter your age is closely correlated with a longer life.
- Complete stress cycles. Managing your stress properly can help you deal with everyday stressors without falling prey to chronic stress, which has been linked to premature death.
- Develop your conscientiousness. A study that followed 1,500 boys and girls into old age found that kids who were considered persistent, organized, goal-oriented, and disciplined lived 11% longer than their less conscientious counterparts.
- Nurture your social circle. A study on social networks and mortality concluded that a healthy social life can help you live up to 50% longer. In fact, just having 3 close social ties may decrease your chance of premature death by 200%.
- Drink coffee or tea. Both beverages have been found to lower the risk of early death by up to 20–30%. But be wary not to abuse them, as too much caffeine can lead to insomnia and anxiety.
- Establish a good sleeping pattern. Going to bed and waking up around the same time each day, while ensuring you’re getting 7–9 hours of sleep, can boost your longevity as it reduces the risk of developing an age-related disease.
A Long and Healthy Life Is a Result of Tiny Choices
“Let me be plain: we are going to get old. End of discussion. The decision of how we age though is in our hands. How we approach this inherent, ubiquitous, incremental process will determine whether we live an active productive and independent old age.”
— Norman Lazarus
Genetics account for much when it comes to health. In recent years, though, studies have shown that it’s what we do every day that ultimately seals our fate — whether we extend our lifespans and healthspans, suffer from age-related diseases, or join the 40% who die prematurely.
Does this mean we have to completely morph our lifestyles from one day to the other?
An emphatic no!
Drastic changes rarely stick. Better to try and adjust your life tiny choice by tiny choice until you look back and see your past self as a stranger. Overall, the Harvard study merely encourages us to move more, eat better, and limit our vices.
If every day you’re a bit better at any of those three, you’re well on your way to living a long and healthy life.
