The great 8
The top 8 priorities to optimize your lifespan AND healthspan
There is no single exercise, food, supplement or “longevity hack” that guarantees a long life. However decades of research suggest that our everyday behaviors can significantly influence both how long we live and how well we live.
1. Maintain Your Cardio-respiratory Fitness
Regular aerobic exercise is one of the most powerful things you can do for long-term health. Walking, cycling, hiking, swimming, rowing and similar activities all count.
Aim to spend most of your aerobic training at a sustainable moderate intensity, with occasional higher-intensity exercise when appropriate for your fitness level. About 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week is an excellent target—30 minutes, five days a week—but don't let that number discourage you. Some is better than none, so start with what your schedule and cardio capacity allow.
2. Maintain Muscular Strength and Function
Muscular strength helps us continue doing the things we want and need to do as we age—from climbing stairs and carrying groceries to getting off the floor.
Resistance training two or three times per week can help maintain strength, muscle and physical function. Even brief sessions can be beneficial. If your schedule permits, approximately 60–130 minutes of resistance training per week is a practical target. More important than achieving a particular number, however, is training consistently.
3. Move Throughout the Day
Exercise is important, but so is everything you do between workouts.
Look for opportunities to move more throughout your day. Take short movement “snacks” during work, park farther from your destination, intentionally take the stairs, walk or bike for short errands, and find creative ways to make movement part of everyday life.
Small amounts of movement accumulated consistently can become transformative over time.
4. Eat Predominantly Minimally Processed, Plant-Rich Foods
Build most of your diet around vegetables, fruits, beans, lentils, whole grains, nuts, seeds and healthy unsaturated fats.
These foods accomplish two important things: they provide fiber, vitamins, minerals and other compounds your body needs to thrive, while simultaneously displacing less nutritious, highly processed foods.
You don't have to eat perfectly. Simply make nutritious, minimally processed foods the foundation of what you eat most of the time.
5. Maintain Healthy Metabolic Function
Healthy blood pressure, blood glucose, blood lipids, body composition and insulin sensitivity are important predictors of long-term health.
Fortunately, the first four behaviors on this list—cardio-respiratory exercise, resistance training, daily movement and nutritious food—are also among the most powerful ways to support metabolic health.
6. Sleep Adequately and Consistently
Sleep is not time lost. It is an essential period of physical and mental restoration.
Determine how much sleep and rest you personally need, maintain reasonably consistent sleep and wake times, and try to align your schedule with your natural circadian rhythm. Improve sleep quality by making your bedroom quiet, dark and cool.
Good sleep supports nearly every other behavior on this list.
7. Keep Alcohol Consumption Low—or Don't Drink
Alcohol is associated with increased risks of several serious health problems, including certain cancers, hypertension and liver disease. Higher consumption can also interfere with metabolic health, cognitive health and sleep quality while increasing the likelihood of accidents and injuries.
8. Maintain Relationships and Purpose
Longevity isn't only about nutrition, exercise and sleep.
Social isolation and loneliness are associated with poorer health outcomes and higher mortality. Meaningful relationships, community involvement, regular social interaction and having a sense of purpose are associated with healthier aging.
Make time for people, activities and causes that matter to you.
Longevity Is Built Through Practice
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about this list is its simplicity. None of these behaviors requires perfection, expensive technology or an elaborate longevity program.
Move your body. Challenge your heart and muscles. Eat nutritious food. Sleep and recover. Limit alcohol. Stay connected to other people. Have something meaningful to get up for each day.
Most importantly, practice these behaviors consistently.
The goal isn't simply to add more years to your life. It is to increase the likelihood that those additional years are healthy, active, independent and meaningful.
