The secret of longevity

There is a common notion that if you are unhappy, it could lead to higher stress levels that could literally shorten your lifespan.Yes, happiness can indeed lower your stress and you're your life easier. But can being happy necessarily prolong your time on Earth ? The latest research suggests that this may not necessarily be true. In other words, unhappiness is just not enough to kill you, in the common sense of the word.

Oxford University scientists claim that previous research has mixed up cause and effect, meaning that stress and misery do not in themselves shorten one's lifespan. 'Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn't make you ill,' says Dr Bette Liu from the University of New South Wales, who worked on the study. "We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality."

Discounting

The British and Australian teams looked at data from the Million Women Study, which has tracked British women since 1996. After discounting those who were ill at the beginning of the study - published in the Lancet medical journal - they were left with 720,000 women with an average age of 59. The participants were then asked a series of questions about how often they felt happy or stressed, before being tracked for a decade - in which time 30,000 died.

Researchers initially found a significant link between those who said they were unhappy and those who passed away. But when they took into account smoking, lifestyle, and socio-economic factors such as wealth, they found the link disappeared. They argue that emotions such as unhappiness or stress can cause people to take on unhealthy habits - such as smoking or drinking too much alcohol - rather than directly affecting lifespan.

Even if there could be no direct link between unhappiness and mortality, it pays to be happy and stress-free as much as you can. As one of the researchers said, being happy is not a magical cure for heart disease and cancer but you are still less likely to get some diseases if you are happy. Happiness might not add many years to your life but it can certainly add some life to your later years.

Risk

Meanwhile, other researchers have developed a new lifestyle score that determines your risk for death, based on your bad habits. For example, we know that sitting for a long period in one location is not good for health, but we don't think that it has a connection with longevity. Apparently, it does. A group of Australian researchers say previously unconsidered risk factors like sitting for long periods of time should be included when estimating a person's mortality risk. In this new study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, researchers looked a group of 231,048 Australian adults age 45 and up who were followed for six years. The researchers then scored the participants on six behaviour measures: smoking, alcohol use, dietary behavior, physical inactivity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep. When added together, they found that the people who had higher scores in these combined measures had a higher risk of death.

The researchers used the measurement "person-years lost," which is the number of years lost due to a person in the study dying before the study ended. Based on their findings, the researchers calculated that if none of the men and women had any of the risk factors, a third of the person-years lost from death would have been avoided.

Wine

Accordingly, short sleep duration had less of an effect on mortality risk than sleeping for a long time. It is possible that long sleep duration indicates underlying disease, fatigue or depression. The researchers also found that the combination of long bouts of sitting and a lack of exercise had a stronger effect. The good news is that by understanding how these different behaviors impact our ability to have a long life, we can make modifications for better health.

Both these studies do not really alter what we know - everyone knows that exercise is good for health and a sedentary lifestyle is bad. Food habits are also important but there are new discoveries every day which suggests that food item A is good for health or food item B is bad. For example, some researchers say that copious amounts of coffee is good for health while others caution against drinking too much of it. A 110-year-old man was recently quoted as saying that his secret to long life was having a little bit of wine every day, while many scientists warn against the consumption of alcohol. Such contradictory claims are often very confusing for the consumers who look for healthy alternatives to their day to day foods and drinks.

Longevity is one of the most researched subjects in science and technology. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Research and Development that could prolong your life or at least make you look younger on the outside. However, with current advances in health care and medicine, it is widely believed that the person who will live to be 150 has already been born somewhere in the world. This is without considering the addition of any bionic implants, some of which are already available. These could really make you younger and add many years to your life, theoretically at least. However, there are those who say that your lifespan is written in your genes, not to mention more spiritual concepts such as fate, which are widespread especially in Asia.

Online

There are other factors that can make you healthy well into your old age. Having friends - no, not online friends, but real people you can meet physically and interact with. Loneliness is a killer. You should fight it off with a tight social circle.

This reduces stress, improves the cardiovascular system and fights off disease, however improbable it may seem. It is said that to be a good way to unload stress, especially for men, who tend to be more emotionally closed-off than women.

There really is no one way to improve your chances of having a longer life. While the studies outlined above have shown that various techniques or habits may improve your chances, it is really all about living your best life possible.