cc licensed flickr photo shared by Beverly & Pack
According to experts there are many ways to increase life span. In today's day and age it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all of the latest health trends and fads. Here are 5 easy things anyone can do to lengthen their lifespan.
Have Sex
Studies have shown that a good sex life can actually improve your health! How? Regular sexual activity increases blood flow, lower blood pressure, helps with improving cholesterol levels, and even increases circulation throughout the entire body. Sex exercises the heart as well, causing the heartbeat to rise up to 150 or more beats a minute. Worried about stroke or heart attacks? Sex can decrease the possibility of these devastating medical emergencies by half.
Stay Active
Everyone knows that exercise is good for the body, but it can also help you live longer. A study performed in Taiwan shows that adding a mere 15 minutes of exercise to your day may decrease your risk of early death by up to 14%. For each additional 15 minutes you add, the benefits increase, topping out at about 100 minutes a day. Adding a small amount of activity to your day can help reduce coronary heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, and of course, obesity. So get moving and live longer!
Fiber
The various products you put into your body can affect not only how you feel, how much you weigh, but some foods have been proven to add years to your life. One of the most astonishing discoveries in healthy aging is fiber. A diet rich in fiber has been shown to lower the risk of death in men and women over 50 years old up to 22% in a study performed on nearly 400,000 people. Cardiovascular, infectious, and respiratory diseases can all improve by eating a fiber rich diet. Just 14 grams of fiber from sources like barley, oats, whole wheat, rye, and brown or wild rice per 1000 calories of food intake should do the trick.
Quitting
No one likes to be a quitter, but quitting these two nasty habits can add years to your life. The first is smoking. Smoking has been shown to decrease life span in a multitude of scientific studies. Quitting before 30 years old can decrease your chance of dying from a smoking related disease by up to 90%, 50 % for those who quit at 50 years old, and even in people over 60, it has been proven that quitters live longer. Smoking 2 packs a day may take up to 12 years off of an otherwise long healthy life. Quitting this addicting habit may be difficult for most, but the benefits of living longer far outweigh the hassle of overcoming the nicotine addiction. Another habit to quit in order to improve lifespan is moderate and/or heavy drinking. While it has been shown in study after study that consuming 1 serving of alcohol a day can increase your lifespan by 2-10 years, moderate drinkers can see a decrease in lifespan of up to 2-6 years and heavy drinkers have a chance of dying 5-15 years earlier than they would have otherwise.
Sleep
Getting the right amount of sleep in today's busy world can be a daunting task, but sleep is extremely important to keep the body functioning in a healthy way. Getting less than 6 hours of sleep has shown to make you 12% more likely to die an early death, whereas sleeping more than 9 hours a night can increase your chance of an early death by up to 30%. Illnesses affected by improper amounts of sleep have been shown to be obesity, breast and colon cancer, and diabetes. Age also affects how much sleep is needed for optimal health as well; babies tend to need up to 16 hours of sleep, whereas the elderly tend to function well on 6-7 hours.
These five simple things can be easily incorporated into you lifestyle and make a healthier, longer living you.