THE NEW YORK TIMES – Pursuing “longevity” has become an expensive — not to mention time-consuming — hobby. But it doesn’t have to be: Experts say many of the practices that are most likely to extend your life are also the cheapest.
Simple lifestyle choices, like eating well and getting regular exercise, are by far “the most effective and well-supported” longevity tactics — and “nothing else comes close,” said John Tower, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.
If you’re looking to live longer and healthier, you’re better off doing “what science and history have confirmed.”
Here are some of the experts’ suggestions.
Work out. It doesn’t matter where.
High-end gyms might have personal trainers and fancy biometric measurements to track your heart rate and blood oxygen levels.
But it’s the exercise itself that’s proven to extend your health and life spans, and you can get the same physical benefits by working out on your own, said Roger Fielding, a senior scientist at the U.S.D.A. Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.
Cardio exercise and strength training are both linked to lower mortality because they reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.
Just walking 30 minutes per day around your neighborhood can significantly reduce your risk; so can doing higher intensity workouts or resistance training using dumbbells at home, he said.
A healthy diet beats supplements.
People try all sorts of eating strategies to extend their life span: Calorie restriction, fasting, ketogenic diets and supplementing with vitamin or protein “bundles” or “stacks,” to name a few.
Some of those practices — like calorie restriction and intermittent fasting — have been shown to help mice live longer, but researchers still don’t know if they have the same effect in humans.
And most of the supplement stacks sold or touted by anti-aging influencers haven’t been sufficiently studied for their safety or longevity claims, nor are they closely regulated.
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