How to Live Longer

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Even if you don’t want to live until you’re a shriveled version of your former self, surely you want to feel good until your dying day.

Step 1: Eat well
Put down the burger and step away from the fries. People who eat mostly fruits, vegetables, and fish and fewer fats and sugars live longer. Colorful foods have more nutrients than their paler counterparts.

Step 2: Exercise
Get out there and move. Being physically active helps people live longer, largely because it cuts heart-disease rates. Research suggests that every hour of exercise you do could add two hours to your life.

Step 3: Work hard
Work hard. People with a strong work ethic tend to live longer, according to an Australian study of centenarians.

Step 4: Don’t be a loner
Don’t be a loner. People with strong social ties are more likely to party on into old age.

Step 5: Chill out
Find a way to handle stress.

Step 6: Have that cocktail
Enjoy a drink every day. Italian researchers found that moderate drinkers live about two years longer than both heavy drinkers and those who rarely or never imbibe.

Step 7: Laugh a lot
Laugh a lot. Research has found that a good sense of humor is essential to a long life, because it lowers stress levels and boosts the body’s immune system.

Step 8: Stay close to mom
Stay close to your mother. A Harvard study found that 91 percent of people who were not close to their mothers developed a serious disease by midlife.

Step 9: Learn how to forgive
Learn how to forgive. Those who do are less prone to heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

Did You Know?
People over 100 years old are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States.