But do you ever wonder if you’re focusing on the right things? In an ideal world, we’d have unlimited amounts of time and energy to devote to every healthy food and activity that we read or hear about, but most of us have to be selective in choosing what to pursue. If you have struggled with health issues or if you have certain chronic diseases that run in your family, you may wonder if what you do even matters. According to the National Institutes of Health, your genetic predisposition only makes up about 25 percent of your risk for early death. As you might expect, choices like exercise, alcohol consumption, and smoking can all impact how long you live, but research also suggests that efforts we make in other ways — some of which may not seem “health”-related — can make a big difference, no matter what your age. Dr. Pizzo recently wrote an article published in January 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) offering a “prescription for longevity in the 21st century” that focused on the importance of life purpose, social engagement, and positive lifestyle choices. “What is my sense of purpose that defines me? What gives me satisfaction? How do I overcome boundaries of loneliness by reaching out and creating community?” are questions that we should consider and even discuss with our doctors, says Pizzo. “Along with lifestyle choices like exercising, good nutrition, and not smoking, these factors make a huge difference in terms of well-being and really impact health outcomes,” he adds. Cultivating connection with friends and family and strengthening your life purpose may require you to step out of your comfort zone even more than a Zumba class, but they offer the reward of a long and satisfying life, no sweat or spandex required.
Social Connection: The Ties That Bind May Help Hold Your Health Together, Too
If you were going to invest now in your future best self, where would you put your time and your energy? This is a key question Robert Waldinger, MD, asked in his TED talk entitled, “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons From the Longest Study on Happiness,” which has amassed over 15 million views. Dr. Waldinger is a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as well as the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life. The project began in 1938 by examining the health and well-being of 268 Harvard sophomores, and then expanded to include a more economically and socially diverse sample from the Boston area. The second-generation study now includes the wives and offspring of the original subjects. Through questionnaires, in-person interviews, and health records, researchers identified associations that seemed to help predict whether a person would be happy and healthy. They found that one of the best ways you can make a positive impact on your health is by putting time and energy into your personal relationships. “One of the key elements of a long and healthy life is being connected to people. Social connections are really good for us, and loneliness kills,” says Waldringer.
More Social Connections Lead to Better Self-Care
Researchers found that people who were the most satisfied with their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. This is likely due to several factors, says Waldringer. “One is that we’re more connected to people, we’re more likely to take better care of ourselves. Our mood is better, we feel better, and that might lead us to engage in something good for us, like exercise or eating better or drinking less,” he says. Sometimes it’s these connections and the feelings they engender that can help us make better decisions, says Waldringer. The positive impact of relationships is not necessarily about the “big” choices, but rather the small microscopic decisions that are moment to moment, he adds. Having a supportive partner can help you take better care of yourself as well, says Waldringer. “They can remind you to take your medicine or to get that problem you’ve been concerned about checked out at the doctor,” he says. Your partner wants you to stay healthy and they might nudge you in that direction, says Waldringer.
Relationships Need Not Be Perfect to Be Valuable
It’s important to note that in relationships or life, things aren’t smooth and happy all the time; that’s not the goal and it’s not how you measure “success,” says Waldringer. “People have difficulties in relationships, but when it’s possible, try to hang in there and work out differences,” he says. “It’s an investment worth making,” he adds. Obviously, we don’t want to encourage people to stay in abusive relationships, but the idea is to hang in there when times get difficult and not just to give up, he adds.
Life Purpose: Finding Meaning Can Help You Live Longer
Why are we here? Do you feel like what you do makes a difference? Those might seem like “deep questions” that you may not often consider, but research shows it can really affect your health. A study published in May 2019 in JAMA Network Open set out to see if there’s a connection between a strong life purpose, defined as a “self-organizing life aim that stimulates goals,” and living longer. To assess the strength of life purpose, 6,985 participants between ages 51 and 61 were asked to respond on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) for seven different items. Questions included statements such as, “Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them,” or “I feel as though I have more to do in life.” “We found that people with the lowest scoring group had about a two-and-a-half-fold increased risk of death compared with people with the highest scores,” says Celeste Leigh Pearce, PhD, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and coauthor of the study. Researchers observed a strong dose-dependent response, according to Dr. Pearce. “As people’s life purpose decreased, they had a higher risk of mortality,” she says. “We looked at specific causes of death, and we observed associations with heart, circulatory, and blood conditions, which would be more cardiac related,” says Pearce. Unlike many health behaviors, life purpose can look different for everyone, says Pearce. “That’s what I like about it. Each person can identify what matters to them and then seek out opportunities to pursue their own personal goals and values,” says Pearce.
Healthy Lifestyle Choices: Good Habits Can Reduce Your Risk of Many Diseases
Lifestyle habits can also make a substantial difference in increasing the years and quality of your life, according to a study published in January 2020 in BMJ. Investigators from Harvard looked at more than 110,000 women and men who were enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. Five key health habits were evaluated in the following ways:
A healthy diet was measured by a high score on the Alternative Healthy Eating Index. This measure was developed by experts at Harvard University’s department of nutrition, and a high score indicates a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and legumes with limited amounts of red or processed meat, trans fats, and sodium.Regular exercise was defined as at least 3.5 hours a week, or 30 minutes a day, of moderate to vigorous activity.Healthy weight range was a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 to 24.9.Smoking was self-reported, and never having smoked or having stopped smoking were preferred behaviors compared with currently smoking.Moderate alcohol consumption was consistent with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and defined as one or fewer drinks per day for women and two or fewer drinks per day for men.
Researchers followed people for 28 to 34 years and found that women who practiced four or five healthy habits regularly at age 50 lived an average of 34.4 more years free of type 2 diabetes, heart diseases, and cancer, compared with 23.7 years for those who didn’t practice any of the five health behaviors. Men who followed four or five of the habits at 50 lived 31.1 years free of the same chronic diseases, compared with 23.5 years for men who didn’t adopt any of the healthy actions.
