Ways to live long and in good health....

Today's Post: Friday, 1-27-2012

Recently there was an article on ways to live to be 100. I messed up & didn’t save where I saw it. (It made some good points, so I wish I had and could refer you to it directly.)

But I’ve used it as a starting point rather than just listing the ideas in it.

1. It’s helpful if your parents and grandparents lived long lives. Part of living long does look to be inherited.

But the genes for long life are complex and there are many. Not just one or two.

And, some of the apparent heredity is from doing as you saw your long lived relatives do or they taught you to do and what you saw them not doing!

The best news though, is that we now know that these genes are NOT rigid designs. Instead they are available built-in capacities. AND both the helpful ones and the harmful ones can be turned on and off, “expressed” or not depending on what YOU do.

The kinds of exercise to do and foods to eat and foods and drinks to NOT eat we often post about quite often are your control levers to turn your longevity genes on and not off!

Doing the reverse – eating and drinking junk, not exercising, and smoking or getting a lot of exposure to tobacco smoke tend to turn them off!

So, to maximize your genes for long life, read our posts and similar information:

Find ways to customize to you the health supporting lifestyle we write about and that work for you.

Do the best you can. The people who do tend to live into their 90’s and stay healthy almost all of their lives.

2. The article I saw said, “Don’t retire.”

That’s one way to do it. For people who make a contribution at their work and still can do so, who are good at their work, and who like it, that works.

Similarly, some people do well with partial retirement. Some cut back to part time. Some become consultants in their area of expertise.

The real message, though, is stay engaged and active in your life.

For many people not fully retiring from work does the job well.

But other ways work for some people.

Some people who can afford to retire from work and already spend time with their extended families or their church or nonprofit work or even their hobbies.
If these people then do these full time or close to it and almost as energetically and as solidly engaged as they did when they were working, that also does the job.

It’s the active engagement with live, staying active, and staying connected to other people that does the job.

I’m likely to keep working myself. But both my parents retired and used the second method.

They both work. Use one of them or both of them. But stay engaged and active.

This both improves your health and makes it worth continuing to live.

3. Use healthy life management strategies.

a) Be prudent. Avoid harm when you can. Always wear your seat belt. Be “proactively paranoid” as business author, Jim Collins recently put it. Find out about risks and how to avoid them and do it.

b) Be purposeful and well organized.

Develop systems and even day to do routines that you almost always use. Take actions you know work to achieve your goals. Find out things that might work and check for the facts and try them.

Have goals and purposes that are important to you. People who have a main personal mission or life work live longer than people who don’t. (This relates to the stay active strategy.) But it doesn’t have to be that grand. Having several things you want to do take action to do also works.

c) Be scientific, careful, and analytical when things go wrong. Things that go wrong do so for specific reasons and can be better if more useful causes are put into place. That’s the truth. People who assume they will stay bad are simply less accurate and less careful thinkers. Worse, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and excuse to do nothing to improve things. Learn NOT to shoot yourself in the foot that way!

But in working on goals or when things go well notice the good things and how they help you and how they keep appearing. Have hope and be optimistic. Remember things you got done and assume you can make these goals happen or you’ll find a way. Then take action.

Martin Seligman, PhD studied these two factors. People who are high in both have better lives in every way. They have better health and live longer. They usually make and have more money. They have more friends. They often succeed in achieving their goals big and small.

d) Be conscientious. Be kind. Be dependable.

You’ll feel better about yourself.

But even more important, you’ll stay connected to people and they will treat you better.

Both benefits help you live longer and enjoy it more.

e) Whether you or not take supplements too, be sure to know which foods have multiple health benefits and eat many of them every week.

Foods have the vitamins and minerals you can get in supplements. But they often do far more.

For mixed carotenes and calcium getting them in food is more effective and safer than taking them as supplements.

Many nutrients have health benefits in their natural form that are NOT in the synthetic partial copies in some supplements.

But the really important 3 reasons for eating lots of these superfoods are these:

Many nutrients such as vitamin E in foods, are complexes or families of related nutrients. The common supplement for vitamin E, alpha tocopherol in its natural form, does have benefits. But gamma tocopherol gives far more protection from prostate cancer. Walnuts have both kinds. Extra virgin olive oil has more kinds than just alpha tocopherol.

In some cases the supplement has a valuable ingredient even by itself. But the foods that ingredient is in also have co-factors that can multiply that value as much as 20 times.

Third, we don’t know all the values of all the nutrients in foods. But scientists are already discovering there are dozens in almost every kind of natural food.

Many of the supplements ARE valuable by themselves or add the value of eating those nutrients in foods. But the best health always comes to people who eat the most nutritious foods.

Blueberries and other berries. Raw nuts walnuts and others for people who aren’t allergic. Extra virgin olive oil. Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables. Broccoli and other dark green, yellow, or orange vegetables high in carotenes. And, avocados -- are all super foods.

People who eat abundantly from these foods have dramatically better health and live longer than people who don’t.

For example, broccoli and other dark green, yellow, or orange vegetables high in carotenes contain alpha carotenes. People who eat them look healthier because they get a warmer skin color. But a high blood level of alpha carotene also goes with good health and living a long life recent studies found.

f) Get at least 6 hours a day of sleep. If you also exercise and sleep that core 6 hours at the same time each day or very close to it doing this works even better. Avoid sleeping more than 8 and a half or 9 hours most days.

g) Do vigorous and moderate exercise most days of every week.

It keeps your brain working and dramatically slows aging.

h) Learn to brush and floss right and do so every day. (The focus on that is stimulating your gums and cleaning your gumline thoroughly.) Get your teeth cleaned and checked every 6 months. This prevents gum diease which causes health harm in your whole body. It allows you to keep your teeth which helps you look and feel younger.

i) Stay connected with people and socialize with them regularly. Learn to do it well and find and stay connected with people you like and enjoy.

Be SURE to include many people younger than yourself and keep meeting new ones! That way if you outlive many of your friends from your earlier life you still are connected.

This does 3 things each of which helps you live longer.

You enjoy life more and find it worth staying alive.

You gain a support network than can give you essential help at times.

And, you get brain exercise from socializing that is hard to believe brain scans found. Just because you are skilled and have done it all your life, it feels easy. But the scans show it requires and activates enormous resources in your brain.

That means that socializing, just like physical exercise,keeps your brain working well as you get older.