It is common knowledge that eating a well-balanced nutrient rich diet, exercising and getting at least seven to nine hours of sleep nightly can help you live longer. However, there are four health strategies that you may want to add to the formula that can help you live longer, better defy aging and feel better overall for a happier life, especially for those past 40.
Stress, as we all know, can cripple as well as kill us. The reason that stress has such power over us is that it is a master of shortening our telomeres that protect our chromosomes to accelerate the aging process. Though we often feel helpless with how we respond to it, there is a way to learn how to channel stress differently and avoid the inflammation it causes for this to happen and enable us to live longer.
The trick for making stress work for you is to think of the problem as nothing more than a challenge that needs to be tackled. Believe it or not, this is one of those simple health strategies that is enough to change the way you process your thoughts to live longer. By redirecting that negative energy that you would devote to worrying into more productive thoughts, you stand to better control what is needlessly aging you, especially if you consider it like a game that you need too win. If you plan and strategize instead of letting the stressful situation bog you down with worry, you will be able to see the solution with a clearer mind.
Every new birthday brings with it other health issues as our bodies slow down. While this is just a fact of life, it is also true that staying fit and active when past age 40 can help improve our aging more slowly in how to live longer and happier. So what am I getting at you may be wondering? An active lifestyle is important to keep the muscles and body healthier, but injuries can stop you from exercising or other activities. As a result, you may need time to recover, which could cause muscle imbalances and pain that also can age us. Movement and using those tight muscles improves blood flow to feel better faster as well as slow down the aging process.
Something else many people fail to take into account when it comes to how to live longer is how you feel about yourself. Stop having a negative opinion of yourself. Just because you do not feel as successful, beautiful, smart, talented, or lonely places you in your own self-inflicted prison since sadness stimulates stress hormones that age. Therefore, you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and attempt to change.
You are the only one that holds the key to your freedom. For instance, enroll in some classes or take an online course if you want to achieve a new goal or sharpen a skill that you may enjoy.
Then again, you may feel inferior to the ideal image you have of what beauty really is. Especially if you are past age 40, just getting a makeover or a new hairstyle can help how you see yourself, which in turn alters that perception for how to live longer and happier by saving you from makeup mistakes. Here’s the thing, more people are just average than drop dead gorgeous looking. The only difference is their confidence level. Even film stars and top models have professional help to create that illusion that can be stuck in your head. The same people can look quite different once the makeup is removed, lighting changes and they are barefaced in street clothes.
Maybe you are lonely but afraid to take a chance to start over with a new relationship after a death or divorce of spouse or partner because of a bad experience. Life is full of risks, but you have to take a chance and put yourself out there first in order to meet new friends or starting a new relationship.
By the same token, how to live longer past 40 involves kindness and helping others without expecting anything in return with the emotions it can cause to surface. Feeling useful to another person that really could use your help can give you an emotional high from the level of happiness chemicals the brain releases such as dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.
