5 Tips To Make you Live Longer Based on Research

1. BOOST YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK

This doesn’t necessarily mean signing up for a new Facebook account, but having a strong social network of friends and family around you to provide support during stressful situations in life is vital to make it to the big one hundred. One study by researchers at Brigham Young university found that people with a solid group of friends are 50 per cent more likely to survive at any given time than those without one.

2. STAY POSITIVE

Your personality could be important in ageing. Studies of the children of centenarians found they are more extroverted and less neurotic than others. Similarly, a study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that people who feel they have a sense of purpose in life tend to live longer. And people who feel that ageing gives them more time to do meaningful things, like spending time with family or helping others, lived longer, according to research by the Longevity Project at Stanford University.

3.GET MOVING

We all like to laze around a bit, but researchers are saying that inactivity is drastically reducing our lifespan. Being sedentary has been linked with diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer – all big killers of people in their old age. A study in 2011 estimated that our lives are about 22 minutes shorter for every hour we spend sitting watching television after the age of 25. So why not get off the couch and try reading the rest of this article standing up?

4. EAT A BALANCED DIET

Studies of rats fed a calorierestricted diet have found this can double their lifespan. But this hasn’t been conclusively proven in humans. In fact, studies of Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians in the US found they didn’t stick to any particular diet and were just as likely to be overweight as their shorterliving peers. In other regions where centenarians are common (Okinawa, Japan, and Sardinia, Italy) the diet includes little, if any, processed food.

5. SLEEP

Around seven hours a night could be the best amount for a longer life. Researchers at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in California found a U-shaped relationship between the average number of hours of nightly sleep and death rates in a study of more than a million American adults. People who slept between 6.5 and 7.5 hours a night lived the longest, and people who slept for more than eight or less than 6.5 hours a night didn’t live quite as long. (source bbc)