Researchers and scientists have long held that there are certain lifestyle behaviors that will increase one’s longevity. The Blue Zones are locations around the globe where people seem to live the longest and healthiest, places such as Okinawa, Japan, and Loma Linda, California. The longevity of the residents in those places has been attributed to their nutritious diets, highly social communities, and physical activity, among other factors. Nir Barzilai, a longevity researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has studied the lives of older people in the United States. He found that half of the centenarians were overweight or obese, half were smokers, many rarely exercised, and very few were especially careful about what they ate. However, they remained healthy and had only half the incidence of cardiovascular disease of others.

Much research remains debatable, and some of it contradicts the findings mentioned in the previous paragraph. People who quit smoking or never smoked have a lower risk of premature death than those who smoke. Numerous studies highlight the importance of quality sleep for both cognitive health and disease control. So, it does seem that, overall, adopting and practicing healthy lifestyle behaviors can increase one’s odds of longevity. Three factors that may also contribute significantly to longevity are faith, resilience, and love.

Faith – Tom Cole, author of The Oxford Book of Aging, says he doesn’t think you can live to an old age without a belief system, whether that’s religious faith or simply a deep conviction that tomorrow holds promise. This belief creates a kind of spiritual resilience, an inner force that helps people push forward through life’s darkest moments.  Researchers from Ohio State U found that religious affiliation alone can add as much as nine years to a person’s life. A separate study showed that women who regularly attended religious services had a 33% lower mortality rate.  Boston U’s Lemina Lee’s research showed that people who maintained a positive outlook had 50-70% greater odds of reaching age 85 than the least optimistic groups in her study. Yale psychologist Becca Levy found that people who embrace the positive aspects of aging live an average of 7.6 years longer than those who don’t. They tend to exercise more, make healthier food choices, and show lower levels of stress-related inflammation in their bodies.

Resilience – Research shows that mentally tough people tend to live longer, especially women. Scientists studying 10,000 people found that those with high resilience- staying calm under pressure, persevering when things get difficult, and feeling their life has purpose- were half as likely to die over a 10-year period as less resilient people. They concluded that building mental toughness may be as important for a long life as physical health. In aging, hormesis suggests that surviving difficult situations- like way or great loss- can prepare the body for other challenges. This effect might help explain why some groups known for enduring adversity, like Holocaust survivors and WWII veterans, often exhibit remarkable resilience and longevity. They developed an extraordinary ability to push forward through the hardships

Love – is another cornerstone of healthy aging. Strong social connections are linked to a 50% greater chance of living longer. The renowned Harward Study of Adult Development has tracked the lives of hundreds of individuals over decades. Its most striking conclusion is that the single strongest predictor of healthy aging isn’t wealth, social status, or even lifestyle. It’s the quality of your relationships. Marital satisfaction, in particular, seems to boost longevity. Among people in their 80’s, those in happy relationships tended to live longer and happier lives than loners. Loneliness as we age can be as damaging to health as smoking or alcoholism.

Longevity doesn’t necessarily follow from the behaviors that have been identified, at least for many people. Ultimately, it may be about finding a way to hold on to meaning and purpose however you can.