Aging is catching up with weight loss as the impetus behind a lot of snake oil. Most of it doesn’t work. But here’s what the medical community knows but no one listens to when it comes to the secret to a long and happy life. The following tips come from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, WebMD, and scores of physicians I’ve interviewed about this in the last six years:
• DIET — Michael Pollan, author of a bunch of books about food and diet, says, eat less, eat mostly vegetables, less meat, more fish, and my favorite line as I recall it, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” Which precludes a lot of eats that come from a manufacturing plant.
• Exercise — Same old song. But recent research shows how little exercise you need to be healthier, about 30 minutes a day, and that can be cumulative, the more the better. And if you insist on sitting doing nothing, eating junk and only moving to change the channel, seriously reconsider reproducing.
• Stop smoking – Scientists can calculate almost the number of minutes smoking a cigarette shortens your life. What’s worse about this, It makes the back end of your life miserable because you’ll be sick.
• Be safe – Wear your seat belt, do you really need a pistol to protect your home, avoid too much sun, don’t take stupid risks.
• Make friends and reconnect with family — People in strong relationships — friendships, social circles. romance and families — live longer and are happier doing so.
• Find a god – Men with a religious life on average live five years longer than men who don’t. Worshiping something seems to be healthy.
• Wash hands and be clean — In truth, you carry and spead fewer germs with a lot of hand washing.
• Take your medications — The pills work. Use them the way the doctor says to use them.
• Get your annual screenings — Most diseases can be stopped and even cured when they’re found early, especially cancer, but most other diseases and conditions.
• Stay away from illegal drugs — Medicinal marijuana is like any other drug. Take it if you need it, not for recreation. Yes, sobriety has it’s shortcomings, but if you followed a few of the previous points, you wouldn’t need to ration reality.
• Be good to yourself — Go places, do things, see things, enjoy new experiences, get rid of the lover who mistreats you and find one who appreciates you, relax, chill, stare at something you think is pretty.
• Help others — Time, money, both, go a long way to improving your health. Or just send flowers to someone who’s lonely.
• Do something you love — People in occupations they like are healthier than people in jobs they hate. In fact, when you hate your job, it distorts other parts of your life. If you’re in it for the money, that’s not enough to offset the abbreviation of your health.