The 4 Best Ways To Live Longer

The main lifestyle factors that increase your life expectancy are reducing stress and avoiding smoking, heavy drinking and type 2 diabetes, a study reveals.

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented naturally by doing regular physical activity, healthy eating, and getting enough sleep.

A person’s quality of life, such as poor sleep and lifestyle risk factors such as obesity will all influence longevity.

Researchers found that diabetes and smoking are the leading causes of life shortening for both men and women.

Smoking lowers life expectancy by 6.6 years and diabetes by 6.5 years and heavy stress by 2.8 years for a man aged 30.

Smoking cause a 5.5 years fewer years, diabetes 5.3 years, and heavy stress 2.3 years decline in life expectancy for a 30-year-old woman.

Exercise is another lifestyle risk factor: men with a lack of physical activity had 2.4 years shorter life.

In contrast, improving quality of life and positive changes in lifestyle, such as eating lots of fruits and vegetables can boost longevity.

Eating vegetables makes people live longer by 0.9 years and fruits by 1.4 years.

For older persons, the factors that affect longevity were similar to younger people, except for the outcomes which were smaller.

People who live with moderation seem to have the best outcomes as well as living longer.

Psychological risk factors also affect life expectancy, for example, having some stress — as long as at a similar level to what is usual for others — did not reduce lifespan.

However, higher levels of stress took a few years off their life time.

The analysed data are from 38,549 Finish people aged between 25 and 74 with a follow-up period of 16 years.

Dr Tommi Härkänen, the study’s first author, said:

“Before, life expectancy has usually been assessed based on only a few sociodemographic background factor groups, such as age, sex, and education.

In this study, we wanted to assess the impact of several different factors to a person’s life expectancy, so we could compare their effects.”

The life expectancy differences between women and men appear to be related to some modifiable risk factors.

Professor Seppo Koskinen, study co-author, explains:

“What was interesting about the study was how small the difference in the life expectancy of 30-year men and women was based on the same risk factor values – only 1.6 years.

According to the statistics from Statistics Finland, the difference between the sexes has been over five years for all 30-year-olds, which comes down to women having healthier lifestyles than men.”

Education in this study appeared to have only a small impact on life expectancy if other risk factor levels were similar.

About the author

Mina Dean is a Nutritionist and Food Scientist. She holds a BSc in Human Nutrition and an MSc in Food Science.

The study was published in the British Medical Journal (Härkänen et al., 2020).

source: PsyBlog

Lifestyle factors that signal how long we live

Keep Things Simple For A Healthy, Long Life

I'm often asked for medical advice by friends, family members, even new acquaintances: What about this diet? What should I do about this symptom? What about this medication?

People are usually disappointed when I don't share their enthusiasm about the latest health fads. Members of my family, in particular, are often underwhelmed by my medical advice.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't always do a great job of conveying why I'm skeptical about the newest medical technology, reports of the latest health news and fashions and even people's symptoms. Mostly it's because in my experience, so much about health just isn't that simple.

Most symptoms, after all, aren't explainable, at least to the level of detail we all seem to want. "What's causing my symptoms?" friends, family and patients ask me. Is it a virus? Bacteria? Arterial blockage?

In spite of all the science and technology in medicine, what we doctors do is more about making educated guesses. Especially in primary care, it's often a matter of playing the probabilities more than providing precise diagnostic information.

But prevention is different. We know a lot about it, based on huge bodies of epidemiological research. Most of prevention is fairly straightforward. You've heard the advice again and again. In fact, the repetition may make it easy to tune out.

I'll risk it, though, and tell you again that there really aren't shortcuts to health. Here's what you need to do:

•     Get enough sleep.
•     Move your body throughout the day.
•     Eat well — a healthy assortment of foods. Mostly plants, and not too much. 
•     Interact socially. Isolation is not good for the body, soul or mind.
•     Take some time to reflect on what you are grateful for.

Recently I've come across a couple of sources that do a good job of conveying these messages. One is a set of books and ideas about the world's so-called Blue Zones. If you haven't heard about them, Blue Zones are the places in the world where people both have the healthiest and longest lives.

People in these communities often live well beyond 100 years:

•     Okinawa, Japan
•     Ikaria, Greece
•     Sardinia, Italy
•     Nicoya, Costa Rica
•     Loma Linda, Calif.

In these places, people have preventive medicine baked into their lives, mostly without even having to think about it. Their daily activities involve eating healthful diets rich in local plants, walking most places, and lots of intergenerational social interaction.

Interestingly, folks in these communities generally do drink alcohol. But they limit it to one or two drinks a day. Also, they typically do eat meat — but not very often and in small portions. (Loma Linda may be a bit of an exception, with its large population of Seventh-day Adventists.)

One thing that probably won't surprise you: Blue Zoners do not eat refined sugars. They skip the convenient packaged foods that we're trained to eat because they're cheap and widely available.

Summarizing these themes visually in under two minutes is another gem from the idea lab of Dr. Mike Evans from Toronto. You've seen some of his other videos here. I love them. Just watch the one below, and follow his advice. That's what I'm trying to do in my own life.

John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa's Medical Matters. He's on Twitter: @GlassHospital

January 2, 2016    John Schumann    Public Radio Tulsa

source: www.npr.org