Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Life is a Banquet! Eat all you can!

15 tips on how to live longer especially for you my possums. Some may say I stole this directly from Forbes.com. I prefer to call it a tribute.

1. Don’t Oversleep. People who sleep between six and seven hours per night were shown to live the longest.

2. Be Optimistic. People who sleep between six and seven hours per night were shown to live the longest.

3. Have more sex. There's decent evidence that sex helps keep us healthy, and thus increases longevity.

4. Get a pet. People who own pets, especially dogs, have been shown to be less stressed and require fewer visits to their physicians than non-owners.

5. Get a VAP. VAP measures important metrics that traditional tests miss. Regular tests only detect half of the people with heart disease, while the VAP has been shown to detect 90% of heart disease patients. That's important because lipid abnormalities can most often be rectified with medication and dietary changes.

6. Be rich. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 24% of Americans whose family income is less than $20,000 are "limited" by chronic disease, whereas only 6% of people with an income of $75,000 or more have this problem.

7. Stop smoking.

8. Chill out. Try as much as you can to let unavoidable, everyday stresses roll off your shoulders.

9. Eat your antioxidants. Antioxidants, substances that are found in foods ranging from cinnamon to blueberries, can scavenge free radicals, compounds whose unstable chemical nature accelerates the effect of aging on our cells. Research shows that certain types of beans (kidney, pinto, black) are among the best sources of antioxidants, while blueberries and other berries follow close behind.

10. Marry Well. A bit of a cop-out this one because it’s talking about your children: Apparently, longevity genes can be inherited. According to a February 2005 study in Mechanisms of Aging and Development, exceptional longevity and healthy aging is an inherited phenotype across three generations.

11. Exercise. Not only does exercise help us maintain our weight, it improves our cardiovascular health, strengthens the bones and increases endorphins in the body--hormones that give us energy, make us happier and help ward off stress and disease.

12. Laugh. Laughter reduces levels of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. It also releases endorphins that work as pain killers and gives your blood circulation a boost. Not to mention it relaxes blood vessels and keeps a person from being angry--a significant predictor of heart disease.

13. Lose weight. For people who are overweight or obese, life is a ticking time bomb. They have increased risk of heart disease and several types of cancer, along with higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes--a condition that is becoming an epidemic in the U.S.

14. Manage Stress. Constant stress produces high levels of cortisol, which has been shown to impair cognitive functioning and weaken the immune system.

15. Meditate. It clears the mind of thought and lets a person concentrate on tranquility. Fifteen minutes of meditation has been shown to produce a much more relaxed state of mind than one hour of the deepest sleep.

6 comments:

Daddy Cool said...

ha! I thought you would.

DEREK said...

these are great, I gotta start meditating again.

Minge said...

Largely fabulous. After reading numbers one and three though, I think I'm going to die any minute. I haven't had sex in six months and I sleep ten hours a day.

Shit!

Minge said...

Lordy!

;)

Anonymous said...

I would like to add another, stop working or at least remember that we should be working to live, not the other way around. Less work gives you more time to have sex too :-)

Daddy Cool said...

I like the way you think.

Now if I could just find someone to pay me to be fabulous.