5 keys to living longer: a complete guide to longevity.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve started joking that I want to climb Kilimanjaro with my grandkids. I said it without thinking. Then I sat down and did some simple math.
As it turns out, the guides on Kilimanjaro frown on taking small children up a 19,000-foot mountain. Consequently, I’d have to climb Kilimanjaro in my later 70’s or early 80’s.
Since the average American male only gets about 78 years, I can expect to be dead around the time my grandkids are able to summit the mountain.
So far, not so good.
It gets worse. There are actually two problems. First, there’s the issue of lifespan. A dead man can’t climb mountains. But there’s also a problem of health span. Even if I live to 83, I need healthy years. If I spend my last 5 years in and out of the hospital, I will not be climbing a mountain.
I started asking questions.
How much can you increase your life expectancy?
Is there a longevity diet?
What kind of exercise will add the most years to my life?
Are there factors I’m missing?
I dug into the research and liked what I saw. For one thing, you can massively influence your lifespan. Genes account for only about 25% of our lifespan. Moreover, in a massive study, researchers from Harvard showed that lifestyle factors could add 14 years for women and 12 years for men. That’s a life expectancy of 95 for women and 90 for men.
There is also evidence from the Blue Zones. People living in places such as Sardinia or Okinawa, are ten times more likely to live to 100 then the average American. Lifestyle plays a huge role in this.
And of course, there are lines of evidence within both health and fitness. Things like cardiorespiratory fitness, muscle mass and eating your veggies can increase both your lifespan and healthspan.
If you’d like a deep dive into exercise and longevity, check out my article How to exercise to increase longevity.
If you’d like a deep dive into diet and lifespan, check out my article Is there a longevity diet?
When you put these lines of evidence together, a picture starts to emerge. You can massively influence your life expectancy, but you have to work for it. There are no hacks or supplements.
Of course, you can only influence your odds. You can do everything right and still get stricken with cancer, hit by a bus, or lose the genetic lottery. But to the degree you can have any expectations, you can expect to have epic adventures with your grandkids.
In what follows, I’ll show you five things you should be doing, if you want to add a dozen or more good years to your life.
I’ll show you how to:
Let’s get started!
1) Optimizing your physical activity
Imagine standing triumphantly on the summit of Kilimanjaro. You just turned 80. It’s probably safe to say that you’re stronger than most 80-year-olds. Your cardio is obviously exceptional. Your bones must be thick and strong. And your joints are strong and mobile. At eighty, you’re fitter than the vast majority of 40-year-olds.
It sounds pretty good, right? Here’s what you want to do.
The Minimum Effective Dose
In terms of physical activity, it doesn’t take much to raise your life expectancy. Harvard’s massive study identified physical activity as one of its five lifestyle factors. The study defines healthy physical activity as a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity. When combined with the other four lifestyle factors, it raises your life expectancy by 12-14 years.
This might be enough to put you on the summit at 80 years old, but it’s cutting it kind of close. Fortunately, you can optimize further.
1) Natural Movement
The blue zone populations don’t exercise. Good luck finding a gym in the mountains of Sardinia, (home of the world's longest lived men).[1] Instead, blue zone populations rely on Natural Movement. They walk a ton. They walk up and down stairs. They sit on the floor. They fix things, build things, work, ride bikes and play. They get low intensity, highly varied physical activity sprinkled throughout their day. And they don’t stop just because they’re getting older. In many ways, it’s the opposite of a typical Western exerciser.
There are examples of this in the scientific literature too. For example, your ability to sit and rise from the floor and your grip strength both correlate with longevity. Not exactly your traditional markers of fitness.
So how can you replicate this in a modern life?
I’ve found that MovNat offers an outstanding method. Simply setting aside some time to practice getting up and down, crawling, climbing and jumping, radically increases the chances that you’ll use it. I use it all the time when I play with my kids.
How much is enough? Hard to say. For the Blue Zone populations, it’s a way of life. That’s probably not possible for most Westerners. I’d recommend you try to sprinkle in as much as you can throughout your daily life.
How much is too much? There’s probably no such thing, but I’d make sure you are getting your cardio and strength training as well. You can get both through Natural Movement, but it helps to have a plan.
2) Cardiorespiratory fitness
Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) correlates with longevity. Running is one of the best studied and most accessible ways to improve your CRF. It looks like you can get the same longevity benefits from walking, but it’s less efficient. You need to walk 3-4 miles to equal one mile of running. Consequently, if you’re looking to save time and you like running, it’s a pretty good investment. [1]
How much is enough? You want 30 minutes of moderate to intense exercise every day. Strength training has a positive training effect on your cardiorespiratory fitness, so I like to run on my rest days. This typically works out to 15-20 miles per week, and allows me to maintain a solid foundation of running capacity.
Can you run too much? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be easy. There seems to be benefits all the way up to 30 miles of running per week. [1] More importantly, what can you recover from? And are you including some strength training and natural movement?
3) Strength Training
Strength training builds muscle, and as we’ll see below, muscle correlates with longevity. But the longevity benefits don’t stop there. First, resistance training correlates with longevity. It correlates independently of cardiorespiratory fitness, and it is additive to cardiorespiratory fitness. This means it’s beneficial on its own, and it’s even better when combined with some cardio.
Second, it increases bone strength and density. Not a bad idea if you want to summit mountains in your retirement. And third, it strengthens your connective tissue. Another good strategy to increase your health span.
How much is enough? Two full body sessions per week is probably a good goal. It’s easier to maintain muscle than it is to build muscle. In some situations, one day a week might suffice, but again you still want 30 minutes of physical activity every day.
How much is too much? It depends on what you can recover from, and again you’d want to include some Natural Movement and cardio.
Take Home Message
The minimum effective dose is 30 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity per day.
The longest-lived populations don’t exercise. They use Natural Movement.
Cardiorespiratory fitness correlates with longevity.
Strength Training correlates with longevity, improves BMI (see below), and is protective of bones and joints.
An ideal plan would include a mix of Natural Movement (especially as a lifestyle), strength training and cardio.
2) Getting your diet right
You’re back on the summit, breathing that fresh mountain air. You’re hungry and pull out a snack. What is it? What do centenarians eat? What kind of food should you eat? Is there a longevity diet?
Here’s exactly how you can start improving your diet, so you can and get on that mountain.
The Minimum Effective Dose
Harvard’s massive study identified a healthy diet as another one of its lifestyle factors. A healthy diet included eating more vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, healthy fats, and omega-3 fatty acids and eating less processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fat, and sodium.
So far so good, but we can go much further. There are many ways to construct a good diet, so I don’t like diet rules. Instead, I like to think in terms of diet skills and diet principles. Here are two diet principles to improve your health and longevity.
1) Eat more whole food
First, try to eat more whole food and less highly processed food. You can think of it as a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, you have chips, most breakfast cereals, candy, cake, soda, white bread and pizza. On the other end of the spectrum, you have steak, salads, fruit, eggs, chicken, fish and sautéed vegetables.
Highly processed food is associated with an overall higher risk of mortality. It’s not a good longevity strategy. Moreover, highly processed food causes you to gain weight. It’s much easier to overeat highly processed food than whole food, and in a recent study, participants who ate mostly ultra-processed food ate 500 more Calories than participants who ate mostly whole food.
How do you know something is a whole food? Well, here are four questions you can ask yourself to decide how processed a meal is.
Can you recognize where it came from? Generally, you know where nuts, eggs, fish or fruits came from. On the other hand, fish sticks don’t look like fish and French bread doesn’t look like grains.
Does it have an ingredients label? Fresh whole foods rarely come with a food label. And if they do, you can pronounce everything on the label. Processed foods on the other hand come with long lists of ingredients, and unless you’ve studied chemistry you probably can’t pronounce most of it.
Does it rot fairly quickly? Real food doesn’t last. It isn’t loaded with preservatives and industrial food products. Conversely, processed food is designed to last. Humanity will likely live on Twinkies during the zombie apocalypse.
How many steps did it take to get to you? Whole food is food you can easily picture eating if you were an eighteenth century farmer. It’s simple. In contrast, the production of most processed food is difficult to untangle with a lot of steps. How do you make margarine?
2) Eat More Plants
One thing almost all nutritionists agree on is the health and longevity benefits of plants. A meta-analysis has shown dose response improvements to health all the way up to 800 grams per day in sedentary individuals.
A meta-analysis is a study of studies, and this meta-analysis included 95 studies on eating plants. The study looked at risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and all-cause mortality. They found that eating more plants correlates with longevity. Moreover, it was dose responsive. This means that you derive additional benefits as you increase your consumption of plants all the way up to 800 grams per day.
Take Home Message
Eat more whole foods and less ultra-processed food.
Eat plenty of plants.
3) Dialing in your weight
Back on the summit. It’s time for your summit picture. What do you look like? It’s highly unlikely that you’re overweight, and you probably have a lot more muscle mass than most 80 year olds. Is there an ideal weight for longevity? How much muscle is too much?
Here’s how to dial in your weight, so you can climb mountains in your golden years.
The Minimum Effective Dose
Harvard’s massive study identified body weight as one of its factors. It defined a healthy body weight as a normal Body Mass Index (BMI). To calculate your BMI you take your weight divided by your height or you can use the calculator HERE.
BMI is very imprecise. It doesn’t take into account body composition. How much muscle mass do you have? What’s your body fat percentage? You could have a normal BMI but still be skinny fat, and these things really do matter.
A Lean Muscular Body
First, let’s consider muscle mass. The longevity benefits of building and maintaining your muscle mass are enormous. Muscle mass appears to be protective against a decline in metabolic function. It might help you survive cancer. And it’s protective against diabetes.
As you age, it becomes harder to build and maintain muscle mass, and as you advance in years, your body starts shedding muscle. This is known as sarcopenia. This isn’t good, because as you age muscle mass correlates with longevity. 1 2
Fortunately, with the right program, you can build muscle at any age, and of course, it helps if you enter your golden years with a strong foundation.
Second, let’s consider getting lean. How do you build and maintain a lean physique? Well, as they say, abs are built in the kitchen. To become lean, you need to restrict your caloric intake. Interestingly, this might also be a great longevity strategy.
There is emerging evidence that a Calorie Restricted (CR) diet improves longevity. A CR diet is typically defined as reducing caloric intake while still consuming all of your essential nutrients. It’s often contrasted with ad libitum (eating at your pleasure) diets. A good example of this would be the Okinawan practice of Hara Hachi Bu. Okinawans, one of the blue zone populations, recite Hara Hachi Bu before every meal as a reminder to eat until they are 80% full.
There’s also a lot of evidence from animals studies that a CR diet substantially increases lifespan. Centenarians, people who live to 100, exhibit physiological characteristics similar to an adult on a CR diet. There are studies showing mechanistic links between a CR diet and longevity. [1, 2, 3] And, there is a 2 year randomized controlled trial that showed potential longevity benefits of a CR diet.
Can you maintain a muscular physique while eating a CR diet?
Absolutely! The cost of muscle at rest is 4-7 kcal per pound per day. Consequently, you could put on 20 pounds of muscle, and it would cost you no more than 140 kcal per day. In fact, a Calorie Restricted (CR) diet is essential to maintaining a lean muscular physique. They go hand in hand. It’s what makes it so difficult.
Take Home Message
The minimum effective dose is maintaining a normal BMI
Building and maintaining muscle mass improves longevity
Using a Calorie Restricted diet to maintain a lean physique likely improves longevity
4) Avoid stupid behavior
If one day you find yourself standing on the summit in your 80’s, it’s probably safe to say you avoided a lot of stupid behavior. The law stupid states “don’t do stupid things, with stupid people in stupid places.” It’s typically used in reference to self-defense, but I think it works just as well here.
All the diet and exercise in the world won’t do you much good if you spend time doing stupid stuff. Here’s what you need to avoid.
MINIMUM EFFECTIVE DOSE
Harvard’s massive study identified smoking and drinking responsibly as two of its five lifestyle factors. In terms of smoking, you had to be a non-smoker. In terms of drinking responsibly, you needed to drink no more than one serving for women and two servings for men per day.
What if you smoke? What if you smoked when you were younger? Is all lost?
Actually no. In the study, participants were measured initially at age 50. If you’re living a healthy lifestyle by age 50 you still can hope to achieve similar results. And of course, it’s never too late to improve. Late is always better than never.
Interestingly, drinking responsibly is common throughout the Blue Zone populations. Maybe we can chalk this up to strategy number five: living the good life.
I could have labeled this the don’t drink too much and don’t smoke longevity strategy, but I decided to broaden it. There are a lot of fun, rewarding and exciting activities that are likely to get you killed. There’s a reason life insurance applications ask about your hobbies. It’s worth weighing the risks and rewards. In other words, climbing Mount Everest is probably not a good longevity strategy. It might be best to stick with Kilimanjaro.
Take Home Message
Don’t smoke
Drink responsibly. For women one serving per day. For men two servings per day.
Manage your risks intelligently
5) The good life
Long-lived people lead good lives. In fact, when you look at the Blue Zones, this seems to be a dominant factor. It’s hard to know which factors are the most important, and many of the factors enter the realms of psychology, philosophy and religion. My approach is to boil it down to two themes.
PRIORITIZE YOUR LOVED ONES
Social connection correlates with longevity. In fact, its effect is similar to smoking and stronger than BMI or exercise. It matters. Within the Blue Zones, people spend lots of time with their children. They spend lots of time with their aging parents and grandparents. They are members of a faith-based community. And they have friends who help them maintain healthy habits. [1]
How does this work? It’s impossible to say for sure, but it’s pretty easy to imagine. Imagine being 90, surrounded by your kids, grandkids and great grandkids. You have your lifelong spouse at your side. You also have several lifelong friends. You’ve known some of these people for seven or eight decades.
Whenever life got hard and tried to take you out, these people were there for you. They supported you through your toughest times. They loaned money, provided a shoulder to cry on and offered much needed advice. They also helped you stick to your principles and live a good, healthy life.
KNOW YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE
Having a life purpose correlates with longevity and can add seven years to your life. The Okinawans have the word Ikigai. The Nicoyans have the phrase plan de vida. Both can be translated as why I wake up in the morning. [1]
Like social connection, it isn’t clear exactly why this is so, but again it isn’t hard to imagine. As Niche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” When life tries to take you out, nothing can keep you in the fight like having a purpose. No matter how dark things get, purpose provides a bedrock of motivation. It also helps you prioritize.
Looking at the good life, I can’t help but think Blue Zone populations live longer because they have more to live for. Their lives are filled with loved ones. They take time to relax and enjoy time with those loved ones. And they know exactly why they get out of bed every day. If that isn’t the good life, I’m not sure what is.
Take Home Message
Prioritize loved ones
Know your purpose
So what do you think? Are you ready to get after it? The oldest person to climb Kilimanjaro was 89-year-old Anne Lorimor from Arizona. It is achievable. It can be done.
Thanks for reading! Would you like help optimizing your own health and longevity? Check out my online coaching.
