Fact checked by Nick Blackmer
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- Daily habits like exercise, healthy eating, and quality sleep can significantly increase lifespan.
- Strong social connections, mental stimulation, and stress management all support long-term health and longevity.
- Maintaining a healthy weight and consistent lifestyle choices can add years to life while reducing disease risk.
Longevity is no longer a complicated puzzle that can’t be cracked. Countless studies suggest that simply changing your daily habits—like exercising regularly, eating nutritious foods, and prioritizing your sleep—could increase your lifespan. Here are seven daily habits that can add years to your life.
1. Engaging in Regular Exercise
If you want to add years to your life, perhaps the single most important thing you can do is to make exercise and movement a daily habit. In fact, one older study found that regular exercise adds a minimum of two to four years to your life, possibly more. Meanwhile, other research found that just 15 minutes of exercise daily can increase your lifespan by three years.
More specifically, researchers say both strength training and walking can have a big impact on longevity. For instance, lifting weights could lower the risk of dying by as much as 22%, while aerobic exercise may lower risk by 24% to 34%. You can get the greatest boost to your lifespan by doing both types of exercise, which could lower your risk by 41% to 47%.
2. Following a Nutritious Diet
Eating nutritious foods not only improves your overall health, but also can impact your longevity. In fact, one team of researchers studied over 5,200 adults from southern Italy for 13 years to determine if following the Mediterranean diet improved their longevity. What they discovered is that those who consistently followed the diet had an average lifespan of 90 years. But those who did not stick to the diet saw a reduction in lifespan of up to 10%.
Another team of researchers found that switching your eating patterns from less nutritious foods to healthier foods can add years to your life. In fact, they note that you can add as much as 10 years to your lifespan by eating more whole grains, nuts, and fruits and fewer sugary beverages and processed meats on a daily basis.
3. Getting Consistent, Quality Sleep
Prioritizing sleep and ensuring you're getting quality rest can also help you live longer. One study found that when people maintained quality sleep patterns, their life expectancy increased by about five years for men and nearly three years for women. They also found that poor sleep contributed to about 8% of deaths from any cause.
Even just adding 25 extra minutes of sleep per night could add a year to your life, according to one study. And if you chose to also address diet and exercise, you would only need to add five extra minutes to your sleep each night in order to see improvements in longevity. The key to improving your lifespan is getting consistent rest every night.
4. Staying Socially Connected
Some research suggests a lack of social connections increases your risk of death by at least 50%, while spending time with other people can lower your stress, boost your mood, and help you live longer.
One study of over 28,000 people in their 80s over five years found that those who socialized consistently lived longer than those who didn't. And, the more time they spent with others, the longer they lived. After five years, though, only those who socialized daily lived longer.
Connecting with friends and family on a daily basis may promote longevity. However, it's important to note that more research is needed, as the researchers did not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
5. Challenging Your Brain
Exercising your brain and staying sharp is just as important as moving your body. In fact, regularly challenging yourself by doing puzzles, learning new skills, or even reading, helps keep your memory intact and lowers the risk of age-related neurodegenerative conditions like dementia.
More specifically, one study found that cognitive training, or doing rigorous mental challenges daily, could turn back the clock on your brain's age. During a 10-week study of people 65 or older, researchers found that doing rigorous mental exercises for 30 minutes a day increased levels of certain chemical messengers in the brain by 2.3%.
6. Managing Daily Stress
Not taking steps to manage your daily stress levels, can shave years of your life. In fact, a Finnish study found that stress can reduce a person’s lifespan by nearly three years. This number is based on several factors, including your stress levels, how your body responds to stress, and other health-related behaviors.
Another team of researchers from Yale found that stress makes your longevity “clock” tick faster. To reach these conclusions, the researchers studied people who scored high on measures of chronic stress and found that they exhibited accelerated aging markers. However, people with strong emotion regulation and self-control were more resistant to the effects of stress on aging. This led researchers to conclude that building your resilience could offset some of the damage caused by stress.
7. Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Maintaining a healthy weight—as well as not smoking, limiting alcohol, eating nutritious foods, and exercising regularly—could extend a woman’s life expectancy at age 50 by 14 years, and a man’s by 12 years. On the other hand, gaining weight in middle age could reduce your life expectancy by up to five years.
That’s why it is so important to pay attention to your weight and try to stay at a consistent, healthy weight for you. If you have obesity, you may want to discuss safe weight management strategies with your healthcare provider. Extreme obesity may shorten life expectancy by up to 14 years.
