Re: How to live longer and be healthier
Get up and move around every hour.
Regardless of how frequently you hit the gym, you should be up and about at least once every hour.
That's based on a set of guidelines compiled by an international group of scientists in 2015. An observational study of close to 4,000 US adults found that people who ambled around for about two minutes every hour had a roughly 33% lower risk of dying prematurely than those who sat all day.
Express yourself.
A 2012 study of 243 men and women aged 95 to 100 concluded that the ability to freely express emotions was among a handful of key traits that appeared to play a strong role in helping people live long and healthy lives.
"This study adds to a growing body of knowledge which suggests that centenarians may share particular personality characteristics ... that may play an important role in achieving positive health outcomes and exceptional longevity," the researchers wrote in their paper.
Protect your skin.
As we age, our skin gets thinner and less supple, which can result in the appearance of things like wrinkles and under-eye circles. These signs don't mean there's anything wrong - over time, healthy skin stretches and begins to lose the structural proteins that keep it springy.
But protecting skin from sun damage is important, since too much exposure can contribute to skin cancer and worsen the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Not surprisingly, the best protection against the sun is sunscreen. Dermatologists recommend using a product with SPF 35 or higher.
"The most important thing is to take care of your skin before all these changes start to take place," Suzan Obagi, an assistant professor in dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Health Center, told Scientific American.
Be more open.
A 2006 study of Japanese people aged 100-106 suggested that being more willing to lend an ear to new and different ideas, feelings, and concepts - in other words, being more open - was linked to a long life. Still, as with any study of exclusively older people, it's impossible to say whether this personality trait predisposed people to longer lives, or whether people who live this long develop openness later. Either way, however, the trait appears to be vital to a long and healthy life.
"We speculate that in the oldest-old, higher imaginativeness and openness to new experiences would help them to adapt to the many losses (friends, family, health, function) that occur in advanced age," the researchers wrote in their paper.
Drink coffee.
Two large, 16-year studies strongly suggest that daily coffee drinking is tied to a lower overall risk of death.
The first study involved more than 520,000 Europeans, and found that men who drank three or more cups of coffee each day were 12% less likely to die from any cause than men who drank none. Women were 7% less likely to die than women who drank none.
The second study, involving more than 190,000 non-white Americans, mirrored those findings. According to those results, people who drank one cup a day were 12% less likely to die than those who drank none, and those who had two to three cups per day had an 18% lower risk of death.
Take things in stride.
Over the course of nearly five decades, researchers studied nearly 2,400 men and women who ranged in age between 18 and 78 at the time the study began. In a 2008 study summarizing their findings, the researchers concluded that emotional stability was one of the most salient personality traits tied to a long life.
In fact, in a preliminary analysis of their results, the scientists found that people who scored highly on measures of emotional stability - meaning they were relatively free from bouts of intense, negative emotions - lived on average several years longer than those with a low score on the trait.
Get 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night.
A large review of 16 studies that involved more than 1 million people found that both sleeping too little (less than 7 hours each night) and sleeping too much (more than 9 hours each night) are linked to a higher risk of dying.
Overall, people who regularly got fewer than 7 hours of sleep each night had a 12% greater risk of dying from any cause, while people who regularly slept more than 8 or 9 hours each night had a 30% greater risk of dying than people who slept between 7 and 8 hours a night.
Several studies have documented a link between sleep deprivation and a range of negative side-effects including low moods, depression, poor academic and athletic performance, an increased susceptibility to illness, and even Alzheimer's.
On the other hand, chronically oversleeping has also been linked to depression and heart disease (though research suggests it is more of a symptom than a cause, at least in older people).
Do not let success go to your head and do not let failure get to your heart.
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Originally Posted by Mark TKO
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