From common people to academics, there is consistent curiosity about what it takes to lead a long, healthy life. From cookbooks to research papers to the hundreds of pieces you may get with a fast Google search, the volume of material to absorb and advice to consider can be taxing.
If you wish to live beyond 100, however, there are basic strategies based on habits you may follow and quick adjustments you can make.
I have been covering lifespan and the lifestyle choices that seem to enable people to live longer for almost two years. Five habits particularly noteworthy are these ones.
Five habits choices that will enable you to live to a hundred:
Change your diet to be healthy:
“Diet is by far the most important factor,” Valter Longo, who has studied lifespan for almost twenty years, told CNBC Make It earlier this year.
Many authorities who research the longest-lived societies throughout the globe cannot stress enough how much your diet influences your lifetime. An eating plan close to the Mediterranean diet is what longevity experts recommend the most.
According to Longo and Dan Buettner, the longevity specialist who interviews centenarians and visits blue zones, a longevity diet should be largely plant-based and include:
· Legumes, especially beans
· Nuts
· Whole grains like oats
· No red meat
· A healthy amount of veggies, particularly leafy greens
“I recommended 12 hours of fasting daily. Let’s assume you eat between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. [or] 7 a.m. [and] 7 p.m.” Longo said. Buettner also eats within a 10- to 12-hour timeframe, according to his interview with Make It in March.
Move your body often:
Some longevity experts encourage daily exercise, and others recommend daily mobility through low-intensity physical activity.
Strength training twice a week and aerobic activity three times a week, even for 10 minutes a day, is one of the daily habits that boost a person’s odds of living to 90, according to the New England Centenarian Study.
In blue zones, the physical activity is a lot less strenuous, but centenarians still move every day, Buettner stated in his Netflix video, “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones.” Typically, people of blue zones travel from place to place, create things by hand, and tend to their own gardens, he said, which allows them to engage in low-intensity physical exercise every day.
Believe in something:
By the end of 2023, Buettner had interviewed 263 centenarians in his lifetime. All but five of those centenarians belonged to a faith-based community, he noted in a Make It essay.
“People who go to church, temple, or mosque live somewhere between four and fourteen years longer than people who have no religion,” Buettner remarked on an episode of “Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris.”
It turns out that those who have a faith or life philosophy are also happier than those who don’t have one, according to Arthur C. Brooks, a famous happiness specialist who gives a free, online course about pleasant emotion at Harvard. When you pursue a religion or spiritual practice, it helps you discover meaning in life, he explained in his seminar.
Maintain positive relationships:
Having strong relationships in your life is the No. 1 factor that can help you live a longer, happier life, according to an 86-year Harvard study that’s still ongoing. But pouring into those ties and developing them is just as crucial, which experts call “social fitness.”
“Whether it’s a thoughtful question or a moment of devoted attention, it’s never too late to deepen the connections that matter to you,” wrote Marc Schulz and Dr. Robert Waldinger, directors of the Harvard study, in 2023.
Catering to social relationships is also a value of centenarians in blue zones. “People in the Blue Zones make their partners a priority, nurture their relationships, and invest in them,” Buettner said in his documentary. “Having the right friends is the biggest secret to helping these people in Blue Zones do the right things and avoid the wrong things.”
Prioritize your purpose and lifelong learning:
In Okinawa, Japan, one of the blue zones with numerous centenarians, ikigai, which loosely translates to “the happiness of always being busy,” is a big value. So much so that a book called “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” is one of the most popular books about longevity and an international bestseller.
Ikigai is all about discovering your purpose and committing to it daily. And that’s exactly what Buettner recommends doing for longevity: “People with a sense of purpose live about eight years longer than rudderless people.”
There are seven practices researchers of the 86-year-long Harvard Study of Adult Development uncovered that linked to “being happy and well in older age rather than ending up sad and sick,” Brooks’ happiness course revealed. One of those approaches is cultivating a growth mindset by investing in lifetime learning and education.
“Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control,” Dr. George E. Vaillant, previous director and one of the pioneers of the project, told the Harvard Gazette in 2001.
