~Writing Well Wednesday Tip~
Would you like to increase your odds of living longer?
According to a new study from Harvard University, you can do just that by adapting the following five healthy lifestyle habits:
- don’t smoke,
- eat a healthy diet,
- exercise for at least 30 minutes a day,
- maintain a normal weight, and
- limit alcohol intake.
For the study, researchers analyzed medical records and lifestyle surveys for over 123,000 adults over a period of about 30 years. Results showed the more of these habits the participants practiced regularly, the longer their lifespans.
More specifically, the men who adopted all five by age 50 lived, on average, 12 years longer than those who took on none of them. Women who adopted all five lived, on average, 14 years longer. All were also 82 percent less likely to die of heart disease during the study period, and 65 percent less likely to die of cancer.
Those who followed all five lifestyle habits were also 74 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t follow any of them.
Sounds fairly straightforward, right? Unfortunately, the study also found that a surprising less than two percent of those surveyed stuck to this healthy way of life.
How about you? Can you do it? I hope so, and Writing and Wellness is here to help! After all, you need as many years to get your stories down as possible.
Have you adopted these five healthy habits?
Source
Feldscher, K. (2018, April 30). 5 healthy habits may increase life expectancy by decade or more. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/5-healthy-habits-may-increase-life-expectancy-by-decade-or-more/
I do all of these things without any trouble (one trick — park 15 minute walk from work every day so that 30 min walking is absolutely minimum of exercise on weekdays!).
However, Jeri’s comment made me realize that I do have one unhealthy habit that unfortunately wasn’t mentioned in the study — sleep. Since I’ve resumed my writing hobby/dream a couple years ago, I find getting proper sleep to be difficult. Late at night, after everyone goes to bed, is often the best time for writing.
Of course, prior to getting back into writing I found it hard to convince myself to go to bed. I think because I had no creative outlet then, I was often left feeling unfulfilled at the end of the day, so I’d always want to ‘watch another episode” or “read one more chapter”.
Very interesting what you say, Mike, about feeling unfulfilled at the end of the day, and that being your reason for staying up late to seek to fill that void. Makes sense and looking back I can see myself doing the same. I’ll be looking into that! As for sleep, you’re right–so important to health, as recent studies (not including this one) have found. There are other articles on this site on the subject, but I’ve found it helps if I do my creative stuff earlier in the day–I’m a night owl, but I write first thing in the morning. Also helps to remind yourself how important that sleep is to health and creativity.
Even then, you can still get cancer at a relatively young age! I will fully vouch for how my healthy habits made going through cancer treatments much less harsh than many of the other people of all ages that I met who were going through the same thing. The one thing that always escapes me is getting enough sleep. I’ve slept 5-6 hours a night for ages and can’t seem to sleep more than that.
Great point, Jeri. Even if we don’t escape the tough challenges (as you didn’t), a healthy lifestyle can help us manage them better. You sure did! So glad you were able to fight through and hope it only gets better from here. :O) Hope you can find something to help with the sleep…