Experts Reveal Secrets of Living Longer, Healthier?
Perhaps you’ve noticed that 50-year-olds are looking exceptionally good these days. Apparently, they’re feeling quite well, too. You’ve heard that 50 is the new 30, right? The fact is, people are healthier today and living longer than ever.
How are they doing it?
You already know about exercising and eating right. Now add to that some recommendations from the latest research on longevity and you may also live longer, healthier.
A great deal has been learned over the last century about living longer and healthier and it seems every time you turn around there’s some new discovery suggesting how you can add years to your life, but one tip appears to be universally accepted: stress management.
The Stress Factor
It is widely held today reducing stress can help improve physical, mental and emotional well-being. It can also result in a longer life, longevity expert Dr. Michael Roizen noted in a CBS Early Show segment about aging on the CBS Web site.
"About 70 percent of how long and well we live are our choices and 30 percent are our genes," said Roizen, co-author of the best seller, You Staying Young. "So you can do a whole bunch of things now. The most important factor is your management of stress. That is, stress is the greatest ager. It affects every one of our aging areas and you get to control it by your response."
Controlling stress levels has been a major focus for more than 19 years at the Institute of HeartMath, whose director of research, Rollin McCraty, recently had this to say about its negative effects.
"Research has recently found a direct link between stress and shorter cell life," McCraty said, "but stress also impacts how gracefully we age and can rob us of a high quality of life throughout the lifespan by depleting our cognitive functions, vitality and happiness."
- An estimated 75% to 90% of visits to primary-care physicians are for stress-related complaints.
- A Harvard study showed individuals living in a state of high anxiety were four and a half times more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death than nonanxious individuals.
Can Living From the Heart Help?
Over the years, IHM founder Doc Childre, McCraty and others with the institute have gradually formulated the principles of what is known as heart-based living – or living from the heart. A core principle of this is heart-rhythm coherence, which is the technical term for smooth, ordered heart-rhythm patterns. A direct benefit of coherence is reduced stress for those experiencing excessive stress, or preventing elevated stress in those who know how to achieve coherence prior to potential stressful situations.
McCraty and others with the research team at IHM’s facilities in Boulder Creek, Calif., have conducted extensive heartrate-variability analyses and shown that heart-rhythm coherence can significantly improve a person’s quality of life by increasing energy levels, sharpening cognitive functions and ultimately helping them live healthier lives. Healthier lives typically means happier lives, which many experts also cite as a contributor to longevity.
In a 2004 paper, McCraty noted the following about the importance of heart-coherence training: "Because it can be easily used to promote a psychophysiological state conducive to stress reduction, thereby promoting physical, mental, and emotional regeneration, we foresee that heart rhythm coherence feedback training will be increasingly incorporated in many types of rehabilitation and disease prevention programs, as well as in the treatment of emotional disorders. Click here to read an abstract of the paper and for a link to the complete executive summary.
The Power of Positive Emotions
"Be positive." Good advice. Today a variety of experts say positive emotions can do a lot more than simply make you feel good or get ahead in life.
A section of The Nun Study, an ongoing investigation into Alzheimer’s disease and the aging process, focuses on Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity. The autobiographies of 180 nuns that were written at a mean age of 22 were assessed for emotional content and related to survival during the ages of 75 to 95. "Positive emotional content in early life autobiographies was strongly associated with longevity 6 decades later," according to the study, which is being directed by David A. Snowdon among members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation.
IHM has conducted numerous scientifically controlled studies employing heart-ratevariability analyses and applications of HeartMath methods to assess the effects of positive emotions such as appreciation, caring and love. The studies show such emotions, usually experienced intentionally, had significant benefits: greater heart coherence and thus reduced stress levels; increased energy; and lower levels of anxiety, anger and other negative emotions.
Significant success also has been recorded when positive emotions are applied in the case studies of people with a range of medical issues, including some types of diabetes and heart problems, depression, sleeplessness, overweight, etc. In other studies, test anxiety in students – read the abstract of the TestEdge National Demonstration Study – was greatly reduced and academic performance improved significantly. Read more on this subject at Science of the Heart.
People Are Living Longer
A little over a century ago, the life expectancy for American women was 48 years and 46 for men. In 2004, it was 80 and 75, respectively, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports. Life expectancy rates vary widely internationally, but they also show dramatic increases. Life expectancy is higher in a number of nations than in the U.S.: Japanese women for example, were expected to live 85.6 years and men, 78.6 years, according to the United Nations 2004 Demographic Yearbook.
| People in their 90s and beyond commonly use the internet, e‑mail, cell phone and, yes, even iPods. It’s about staying independent and keeping up with the world, which experts say is very typical of those who live long lives. |
The CDC Web site attributes higher life expectancy rates in America to the following, which certainly applies worldwide: "Improved access to health care, advances in medicine, healthier lifestyles and better health before age 65."
Secrets of the Blue Zones
In his international best seller, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, author Dan Buettner writes about select geographic locations where people seem to be outliving the rest of the world. Buettner says they’re healthier as well, suffering fatal diseases affecting the rest of the world at remarkably lower rates. Among these blue zones are Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; and Loma Linda, Calif.
Buettner notes the following lifestyle characteristics shared by these people, who have a higher rate of centenarians than other areas of the world:
- Family first.
- Typically they don’t smoke.
- Food comes primarily from plants.
- Constant moderate physical activity.
- Socially active.
- Eat legumes regularly – soybeans, peanuts, peas, lentils, etc.
Some People Are Living a Lot Longer
Although some sources give a higher figure for the number of people 100 years or older in the U.S., the highly regarded and ongoing New England Centenarian Study last put it at approximately 40,000 – 85% of them women and 15% men. Worldwide, numbers are difficult to come by, though the figure very likely goes well beyond 100,000, based on a check of centenarian statistics. The study notes that centenarians comprise the fastest growing age group in the United States.
Then there’s the venerable group of people known as supercentenarians. "Supercentenarians, people age 110 years old and older, are extremely rare individuals," the study’s Web site notes. "There are likely 60 or so in the United States and 200-300 worldwide."
The Centenarian Study site observes the following about the oldest Americans: "Consistent with our hypothesis that centenarians markedly delay or even escape age-associated diseases (e.g. heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease), we noted that 90% of them were functionally independent the vast majority of their lives up until the average age of 92 years and 75% were the same at an average age of 95 years."
Although many characteristics of the study participants vary widely, including education, wealth, religion, ethnicity and diet, others are shared:
Interesting Facts:
- The oldest living person in the world that has been verified is Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Ind., who turned 115 in April. (The are many other claims of older people around the world, but they have not been officially verified.)
- The oldest person ever that has been verified was Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France. She died in 1997 at age 122.
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- Few are obese. Men are usually lean.
- Substantial smoking history is rare.
- A preliminary study suggests they handle stress better than the majority of people.
- 30% had no significant changes in thinking abilities
- Exceptional longevity runs strongly in families.
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