Want to maximise your chances of living a long, healthy life? Here are four daily habits that could shorten your life that we recommend avoiding.
We know that habits like smoking or drinking heavily can impact our health and longevity. But there are other, lesser known, daily habits that can be just as bad for us – if not worse.
Many scientists today are trying to discover the secrets of the superagers – men and women over age 80 who maintain memory and cognitive abilities that are comparable to people who are 20 to 30 years younger.
And one thing is becoming increasingly clear; while genes can certainly help give you a head start, it’s the lifestyle habits and attitudes these people have that are helping them to stay younger for longer. (This is something explored in depth in the excellent book Breaking the Age Code by Becca Levy.)
So, if a significant part of biological aging is driven by our everyday habits, what habits are helping us? And perhaps more importantly, which habits are aging us more quickly?
That’s exactly what we explore in this article. We show how four common daily habits are aging you faster than you realise, so you can find ways to avoid and ditch them and hopefully live longer.
Here are the four daily habits that are shortening your life:
- Sleeping badly
- Easting ultra-processed food
- Sitting down for long periods
- Feeling stressed
Let’s explore each one in more depth and find out how it’s potentially cutting years from your life, and what you can do to avoid it.
1) Sleeping badly
While not everyone needs eight-hours sleep a night, the sweet spot for most of us is between seven to eight hours. Anything less than six hours can be dangerous for long term good heath and wellbeing.
The impact of chronic sleep deprivation can be significant. Mentally, you may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling your emotions and behaviour, and coping with change.
In the short term, not getting enough sleep impacts your immune system, making it harder to fight off illness, and taking longer to recover. It also makes your cells age faster; according to one study, just a single night of partial sleep deprivation promotes biological aging as we get older.
Long-term sleep deprivation increases inflammation in your body, which elevates your risk of chronic conditions, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and stroke. Inflammation can also be a cause of arthritis, leading to joint pain and lower quality of life and mobility.
Chronic insomnia makes you LOOK older too, with paler skin, more wrinkles, dark circles under your eyes and a tired appearance.
So you can see how important it is to regularly get a good nights sleep, and give your body and brain plenty of time for maintenance. If you struggle with insomnia, the NHS has a free self-help sleep guide.
2) Eating ultra-processed food
It’s not just a lack of sleep that can cause inflammation. A high sugar intake has been linked to many chronic conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, fatty liver disease, and some cancers.
And what type of food contains high levels of sugar, as well as saturated fat and salt ? Ultra-processed food.
So what exactly are ultra-processed foods? As a rule, they’ll have more than one ingredient that you won’t usually find in a kitchen. They’ll also contain additives and ingredients that are not generally used in home cooking, like preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, and artificial colours and flavours. They’;l also generally have a long shelf life.
Worryingly, ultra-processed foods often have virtually no whole food ingredients. They are designed to be tasty and easy to eat, usually at the expense of fibre, vitamins and minerals.
Examples of ultra-processed foods include:
- Processed meat, such as as ham and sausages
- Mass-produced bread, breakfast cereal and instant soup
- Packaged pastries and pies
- Crisps and biscuits
- Ice cream and sweetened fruit yogurts
- Carbonated drinks
The dangerous thing about the effects of ultra-processed food is that you can’t always tell the damage they are doing from the outside. Just because you are slim doesn’t mean that you are healthy if your diet is highly processed.
We know that a healthy diet keeps our body in better shape and can slow down the effects of aging. And a diet high in ultra-processed foods does the opposite. One study found that for every 10% increase in eating ultra processed foods, there is a 2.4-month increase in the gap between biological and chronological age. Another words, they speed up biological aging.
So if you want to live longer and enjoy better quality of life, stick to healthy, whole, home-cooked foods as much as possible. You can read advice on eating for longevity here.
3) Sitting down for long periods
We know that getting exercise is good for us, but even if you do keep fit, spending a significant amount of your day sitting down can age you more quickly.
Research has found that sitting down for too long leads to changes in “glucose and lipid metabolism, mitochondrial function, systemic inflammation, redox balance and cardiovascular adaptations”.
Another study followed 481, 688 people over 12.85 years, and found that people who spent a significant amount of their day sitting, showed a higher risk of mortality from all causes (16%) and cardiovascular disease (34%).
Spending much of your day on a chair or behind a desk can also impact your joints as you age, leading to muscle weakness, stiffness, a reduced range of motion and flexibility and restricted blood flow, which can result in joint pain, swelling, and blood clots.
So what can you do if you have a job that requires you to sit down for long periods? The good news is that getting up for regular, five minute periods of light walking can help lower your insulin, glucose, and blood pressure levels. Another study found that doing 15 to 30 minutes of physical activity a day mitigated the increased risk of a mostly sedentary day.
4) Feeling stressed
If you feel stressed on an almost daily basis, the stark truth is that you could be worrying yourself into an early grave.
Research shows that people who are stressed age much more quickly. The telomeres in all types of their cells shorten more rapidly, which leads to premature aging and earlier onset of age-related diseases. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that 75%–90% of human diseases are related to stress.
Stress induces inflammation, and research has shown that it induces or worsens cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, depression, neurodegenerative disease and cancer.
And if that wasn’t enough to convince you that stress was bad for you, it also makes you LOOk older than you are. When you are stressed your body produces more cortisol, which breaks down collagen – the protein that is responsible for keeping your skin firm and smooth. This can leads to premature aging, fine lines, wrinkles, and reduced skin elasticity. Chronic inflammation can also lead to dull skin.
So what is the solution? Try to identify the sources of your stress, and come up with strategies to deal with them. Can you resolve the issue? If not, is there support you can get to cope better? Can you adopt habits that can help you better manage the symptoms of stress?
If you often find yourself worrying, I recommend using this easy, four-step technique that helped me.
Can you adopt healthier, age-defying habits?
I appreciate that some of these habits – such as sleeping better and reducing stress – aren’t as easy a fix as eating healthier. After all, we don’t choose to struggle with sleep or worry too much.
But if you can find ways to work on these habits and live a healthier daily life, you should not just increase your chances of living longer, but enjoy better health and quality of life. What’s not to love about that?
