Your game plan for fighting Father Time
Five research-backed ways to start extending your health span now—no matter how old you are.
Care for your brain by being social
Most people understand that making an investment in your physical health, like quitting smoking or getting in shape, could lead to a longer, healthier life. It turns out that the same can be said for investing in your personal relationships. Spending time with friends and family—or signing up for a recreational sports league team—could pay dividends down the road.
Maintaining social ties seems to work like mental exercise, by promoting new connections in your brain and slowing down age-related cognitive decline. And you don’t need to be a social butterfly to reap the benefits of connecting with other people.
A recent study found that having even one social interaction a month can cut the incidence of developing dementia in half. And the benefits are even greater if you connect with a person that you can confide in.
“It is very important to be socially active for our brains,” says Suraj Samtani, a lead author of the study and a dementia researcher at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, “but we don’t need that much” to make a big difference. Since conducting this research, Samtani has ramped up his own social life through exercise. “I started karate, and I catch up with friends and go for walks every week,” he says. “It has just changed the way I do things.”
(Your brain shrinks after 40. Learning a musical instrument can reverse it.)
Broaden your definition of exercise
It’s almost impossible to overstate how good physical activity is for your health, no matter how old you are. But you don’t necessarily need to be deadlifting 400 pounds or running an ultramarathon. Just a little bit of movement—taking the stairs, carrying groceries—has significant health advantages for otherwise inactive people. “Any little good that you can do is great,” says I-Min Lee, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard University.
We are only now verifying these insights, Lee says, because of a new generation of long-term studies that equipped participants with accelerometers (think fitness trackers). And she found that, contrary to popular thinking, the longevity benefits of walking hit much sooner than 10,000 steps. Other studies have linked shorter walks to improved mental and cardiovascular health.
(Forget about 10,000 steps a day—science now has a more accurate number.)
Similar benefits come from short bursts of more vigorous activity, such as walking up a hill. “Really tiny amounts—anything from two to four minutes per day,” says Emmanuel Stamatakis, professor of physical activity and population health at Australia’s University of Sydney. In one study, he discovered that these bursts of activity are associated with a substantial reduction in the incidence of various types of cancer.
In other research using comparable data, Lennert Veerman, a professor of public health at Griffith University in Gold Coast, Australia, found that for the least active portion of the population, each hour of walking translates to six extra hours of life. “That’s quite a good return on investment,” he says.
Read more of our reporting in Older, Faster, Stronger
Build up your cardio capacity
No matter what new longevity science comes out, many researchers still consider cardiovascular fitness level as one of the best measures of overall health. Luckily, it can be improved with consistent exercise—and easily tracked.
The gold standard for evaluating your performance level is to calculate the maximum rate of oxygen you use during exhausting physical activity, which occurs at the period during your exercise when you’re breathing hardest. This figure is called VO2 max, and a precise measurement of it usually requires breathing into a mask connected to a tube in a lab. But consumer-wearable devices like GPS running watches provide a general estimate.
Whether your number is in a good or a bad range depends on your age and gender. For example, a VO2 max of 40 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram per minute would be considered below average for a 25-year-old man but excellent for a 75-year-old. Either way, that number strongly correlates to your heart health and overall lifespan. “Individuals who have a higher VO2 max have a lower risk of dying from all causes,” says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
Over time, moderate to vigorous cardio workouts of all kinds can boost your VO2 max, training your body to more efficiently process oxygen and turn it into energy. A quick workout to do just that is a high-intensity exercise: for example, a 20-minute workout that includes three vigorous five-minute efforts. The specific movement matters less than the intensity. It could be cycling, running, or using an elliptical or rowing machine.
Don’t let your muscles go to waste
Raw strength is strongly associated with a healthier life. If you train for stronger muscles and bone density now, you’ll have a greater chance of remaining independent as you age. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends everyone perform some sort of resistance training at least twice a week. But what’s the best strategy to actually make those strength gains?
(Lifting heavy weights can help you mitigate osteoporosis. Here’s how to get started.)
A helpful answer is emerging from science—and is already common knowledge at your local gym. Lift weights that are heavy for you, and try to progressively add weight over time. How heavy is heavy? An important concept is “muscular failure,” the point at which you can’t perform even one more repetition. “You need to know where failure is to know how hard you’re supposed to be training,” explains Brad Schoenfeld, a leading strength-training researcher at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York.
While you can make appreciable gains in other ways, studies show the optimal strength workouts consist of low numbers of reps (one to six) performed relatively close to failure—two or three reps away. In other words, strength workouts are ideally quite strenuous. But this training only needs to take an hour or so each week. “You can make very nice gains with a fairly minimal routine in three or even two days a week,” Schoenfeld explains, “provided you train hard.”
Cultivate good eating and sleeping habits
You’ll only get the gains you deserve from your workouts if they’re paired with solid recovery and nutrition. And while the wellness industry would like to sell you gadgets and supplements for that, it’s best to start with some basics.
For recovery—from the gym and from life—nothing is more important than sleep. And a foundation for better rest is, simply, routine. Studies indicate that people who go to sleep and wake up on a regular rhythm get more and higher-quality sleep.
This is because your body is hardwired to operate on a roughly 24-hour circadian cycle. Disruptions can lead to “increased risk for cardiovascular disease, increased risk for cancer, changes in mental health, all those sorts of things,” says Tara LeGates, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
And while the prevailing diet advice often focuses on what you can’t eat, a better approach is to find a way to feel full and satisfied from whole, unprocessed foods. Fill your plate with vegetables, grains, and meat, fish, or plant proteins—stuff you enjoy.
One landmark study provides some insight as to why: Researchers compared a diet of ultra-processed foods—factory-made, ready-to-eat items—and a diet of whole foods. While the two diets were nutritionally equivalent, study participants who went on both diets for two weeks each gained weight on the processed diet. Industrially prepared foods seem to mess with your sense of hunger. The study subjects said the taste of the two options was equally appealing, but they ate more of the ultra-processed foods all the same.
The good news is that your whole-foods diet can (should!) be delicious. “The more you can do to structure your life so that you’re not having to constantly resist temptation, the better,” says Zachary Knight, a physiology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the internal processes that govern hunger. “That means having healthier foods at home.”
The second season of Limitless is streaming on Disney+. Check local listings.
