A 30-Year Harvard Study’s Top 5 Life-Span Boosting Habits
Live not just a year or two longer, but a decade or more
With the fear of death being ingrained in our wiring, if we find ourselves on the brink of it, we’d give anything if it means just another day, month, or year of life.
No wonder the rich are dishing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to cryogenically preserve their bodies — in the laughably slim hope that our descendants might discover the elixir of immortality.
But funnily, few of us pay attention to our present lifestyle — it’s here that many life-span killers have surreptitiously sought refuge.
Thankfully, we don’t have to do the heavy lifting. The folks at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health did it — by sifting through 25+ years’ worth of data from 78,000 women and 44,000 men.
The result was 5 simple habits that time and again, resulted in longer lifespans.
Eat Your Greens
Even the fanciest of super-cars is going to the shed if you gas it up with impure petrol. Our bodies are no different — as the cliche goes, “You are what you eat”
When I came home during the lockdown, just a few months of my mom’s healthy cooking and whole foods made me look and feel my best—despite all the fancy supplements I used to take back in college.
A helpful mindset shift is to “Eat for nutrition first and taste second.” If you stick to this for long enough, your brain will in fact associate nutrition with taste — no wonder I find fast food disgusting nowadays.
Protein, vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates — your body needs them all. Here are a few ways to eat a well-balanced diet.
- Add a Serving of Greens and Veggies to Every Meal. Vegetables, especially green leafy ones, are goldmines of vitamins and minerals. So drizzle carrots, cucumbers, beans, broccoli, lettuce, etc. into your diet.
- Swap out Simple Carbs for Complex Ones. Simple carbs (mainly sugars) spike your insulin while complex carbs provide slow-burning long-lasting energy — eat brown bread (and rice) instead of white, oats instead of cereal, and apples instead of candies.
- Load up On Protein. A higher protein intake has a host of benefits — better satiation, stronger bones, higher metabolism, lower blood pressure, and reduced body fat, etc. Here are some of the best sources.
- Swap out Bad Fats for Healthy Ones. Fries, cakes, pastries, pizzas, and other heavily processed foods contain trans fat — a type of fat that’s lethal mainly to the heart. Swap these out for healthy unsaturated fats — nuts, eggs, fish, pumpkin seeds, olive oil, etc.
Get that Heart Racing and Perspiration Flowing
Millenia of evolution wired us to move. Being a couch potato would have been fatal for our hunter-gatherer ancestors — no food and easy prey to hungry predators.
Physical inactivity is no less lethal today — cardiac risk, obesity, high cholesterol, depression, and anxiety, to name a few potential effects.
In this era of 9 to 5 desk jobs, moving around all day might not be feasible, but you can and should take time out to exercise — lifting weights, running, swimming, Zumba, boxing, yoga, calisthenics, there are tons of options.
Like a car that rusts and sputters due to disuse, your body’s going to degenerate without exercise — so stay on the move.
Be Your Weighing Scale’s Best Friend
It’s ironic that as we mostly eradicated the historic epidemic of starvation and famine, a new one took its place — the epidemic of overeating and obesity.
This again goes back to our evolutionary roots — a fit hunter-gatherer is more likely to find food and outrun a predator than an obese one. So, obesity is not a desirable trait.
The higher your body fat climbs, the scarier the effects become — joint pain, diabetes, depression, stroke risk, organ damage, cancer, and even death.
But if you follow the aforementioned two points, you’re unlikely to stay at an unhealthy weight. If you’re overweight, here’s a comprehensive guide on how to lose and sustain weight loss.
Once you get to a healthy weight, maintaining it is a piece of cake — weigh yourself every morning, jot it down, don’t worry about daily fluctuations, and track the weekly average.
Go Easy on The Shots
Drinking alcohol isn’t natural by any stretch — our chimp cousins would be bewildered at the stupidity of paying money to down poison. But again, it’s life and as the saying goes, “Choose your poison”.
Now, I’m no saint myself but my alcohol consumption is under control — only during first dates and large social parties. On average, it comes down to a moderate amount 1 to 3 times a month.
Excessive drinking’s linked to high blood pressure, weakened immunity, disrupted hormones, heart risk, mental health issues, cancer, and organ damage.
Ask yourself, “Is drinking alcohol worth it?”. If it helps you loosen up and have a great time socially, then go ahead. But if it’s a quick coping mechanism for your worries, consider quitting.
1 in 8 Americans is an alcohol addict — you don’t want to be one of them.
Don’t Puff Smoke Like a Chimney
This is even more unnatural than the previous — deliberately inhaling harmful fumes and messing up your lungs? Where’s the sense in that?
My few encounters with smoking were enough to call a life-long divorce with tobacco — the ephemeral low high is not justified by the severe health effects, mainly lung damage and cancer.
Take a hard look at this healthy vs smoker’s lungs photo and decide for yourself. Now, as someone that has dealt with addictions in the past, I know how hard it is to quit one.
Don’t be too hard on yourself and go slow — chain-smoking packs? Move to a few per day. Then, alternate days. Once a week. Once a month. And boom, before you know it, you’re off.
Things like Nicotine tablets and gums can help — president Obama leveraged the same to quit his smoking habit. A habit coach, accountability partner, or support group can also help.
