Sir Auditor UviesherheWith too many things that can cut short human life, this article aims to enlighten you on health habits that can help you live longer.
We all want to enjoy life and live it to the fullest in longevity. But you need to understand that living a longer life comes at a price.
With so many lifestyles that can cut short your life, envisioning a healthy longer life becomes an enormous challenge.
So, if you are wondering if living a healthy, longer life is achievable? What habits you can adopt that can guarantee you a longer life?
Then, keep reading to find out.
1. Healthy Diet
An all-time important factor that can elongate your life is eating a healthy diet.
All living things need food for survival, whereas healthy food is a necessity for a longer life.
Incorporating the habit of eating food that contains adequate nutrition is your starting point to living long.
To achieve longevity through dieting, focus on eating natural fresh foods. This includes eating whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Also,
eat foods rich in micronutrients, antioxidants, carotenoids, and phytochemical.
Some of the nutritious foods to include in your diet include egg, milk, fish, tomato, beans, scent leaves, yoghurt, avocado, okra, bitter leaf, fermented foods, pumpkin leaf, and seafood.
When you need to process food, don’t overly process it, as it will speedily alter or destroy the nutrients that are available in the food.
Remember that your body needs the nutrients to repair worn-out tissues, boost immunity and facilitate healing. So, do not overly process food.
Make it a priority to eat foods rich in vitamins, minerals and macronutrients in the right proportion.
A balanced diet is food that contains adequate nutrition of the different classes of food in the right proportion.
The average life expectancy in Nigeria in 2023 is 53.9. This is a pointer that you need to eat something different from what the majority is eating out there that cuts short one’s life.
Other benefits of healthy eating include reduced risk of obesity and heart disease, development of strong bones and muscles, building of healthy cells and organs, and providing the body with energy.
You are a product of what you eat. Continuous eating of a healthy diet gives you a long-term benefit of ageing in health and increases your longevity.
2. Physical exercise
Physical exercise is one of the best ways to improve life and increase life expectancy.
According to the research by JAMA Network, where 122007 patients have treadmill testing.
The result shows that there is an inverse relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and long-term mortality. This means that physical fitness is a precursor for longevity.
With today’s modern lifestyle and the intervention of technology, Most things can now be automated with minimum physical effort, which means reduced physical activity.
Using cars and bikes has made walking unpopular among many. To stay healthy and live longer, you need to engage in physical exercise.
Taking a walk daily, cycling, aerobic walk out, and running are exercises that can enhance long life by reducing excess weight and keeping you in shape.
If you would like to explore other physical exercises that can keep you fit to live longer, then consider gym exercise, soccer, and tennis.
There are day-to-day physical activities that can serve as exercise.
Instead of driving to the shopping mall in the neighbourhood, choose to walk. You can also walk to the church or mosque.
Instead of using the lift from the fifth floor, you can use the staircase and stop on the second floor. Then, use the lift to the ground floor.
Regular walking is one of the best exercises to live longer. So, start your longevity journey by consistently taking a walk from today.
3. Manage stress
You need to manage stress in order to live longer, considering its profound effect on the body.
When there is a lot on your list to do each day, you may end up with stress before the week runs out.
Therefore, it is important to manage stress to increase your lifespan.
There are simple ways to manage stress during and outside work hours and.
They include taking adequate rest, physical exercise, a balanced diet, deep breathing, and listening to music.
While you may not completely avoid stress, you need to balance your personal life, family, and work.
Managing stress is a great way to increase productivity, enhance personal well-being and prolong life.
4. Healthy Body Mass Index (BMI)
To live longer, you need to watch your weight and maintain a healthy BMI. BMI is a tool that measures the ratio of your weight to height in determining your body fat.
Healthy BMI falls within the range of 18.4 to 24.9, while any value above 25 shows overweight.
Obesity is a BMI value of 30 or above. Excess BMI can shorten your life expectancy. This implies that shedding off excess weight can help you live longer in health.
Being overweight puts your health at risk as it exposes you to many cardiovascular diseases.
Some diseases associated with high BMI are hypertension, kidney disease, heart attack, and prostate cancer.
BMI is usually used to calculate body fat. However, there are some categories of people who cannot use BMI to determine body fat.
These include lactating mothers, pregnant women, athletes, and children.
5. Adequate rest and sleep
Getting enough sleep helps promote your overall well-being. Lack of sleep can reduce your life expectancy.
You endanger your life if you do not take sufficient rest and sleep each day.
A lot of activities that require your attention each day can make you ignore taking adequate rest.
When you subject your body to too many activities without rest, your body suffers it.
Just like a machine has its capacity and needs maintenance, your body also has its limits.
Therefore, be diligent to take care of your body and give it the rest it needs.
If you have a poor sleeping habit, you can face burnout, heart attack, cellular ageing, kidney disease, stroke, and heart disease.
A healthy sleeping pattern will enable you to rest your body to get refreshed to achieve more.
Some benefits of sleep are boosting brain functioning, managing weight and obesity, increasing attention to detail, sharpening memory, and reducing the chances of chronic diseases.
6. Maintain Healthy Relationships
Building and maintaining a healthy relationship is another all-time factor that can make you live longer.
You need to create healthy relationships with people around you to live longer. We all flourish where there is an abundance of love with peace of mind.
Imagine coming back from a stressful day to the comfort of your home.
A home where people around you are kind and peaceful will boost your self esteem, instil a sense of belonging and improve your emotional well-being.
Building a meaningful relationship with your friends, spouse, and family is a product of positive intentional living.
Choose to cultivate positive relationships with yourself, family, colleagues, and community members. This way, you can live happily and age beautifully.
Healthy relationships leave you with lasting beautiful memories that brighten your days and elongate your life.
7. Don’t Smoke
Smoking can damage your internal organs, reducing your life expectancy. Since you desire to live longer, you must say no to smoking.
Today people smoke a lot of stuff including tobacco and marijuana.
Tobacco companies understand the health risks associated with smoking. They issue warnings about the danger of smoking.
Therefore, they write “Smokers are liable to die young” on the cigarette pack.
The effects of smoke on your overall health include lung disease, cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
Other effects of smoking on mental health are anxiety, depression, suicide attempts and mental disorders.
To smoke, you introduce harmful substances like nicotine into your body system.
Nicotine disrupts blood circulation, increases blood pressure, and heartburn. This condition predisposes you to many cardiovascular diseases.
Smoking can make your head feel light and relieve the tension of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
However, it leaves you with more severe damage and difficult health conditions that cut your life short.
Therefore, to increase your life expectancy, avoid smoking and excessive drinking of alcohol which destroys your immunity.
8. Reduce salt and sugar intake
Salt and sugar can contribute positively to your health if you take it in the right quantities. The right salt consumption level is 5g/day.
To achieve this, consume food with less sodium content and add less salt to food during preparation.
Consuming excess salt increases blood pressure, which leads to diseases like stroke and death, eventually.
Sugar is another food additive that can negatively affect your body system if taken in excess amounts.
Excess sugar in the body can cause obesity, tooth decay, and diabetes. To be on the safer side, take free sugar that is less than 10% of the amount of total energy.
Curtailing your salt and sugar consumption will keep you healthy to live longer.
9. Avoid hard drugs and drug abuse
Hard drugs can leave your body system in total shambles and negatively affect your longevity.
Hard drugs are drugs that endanger your health and cause addiction with the potential to lead to death.
Hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and ecstasy can disrupt your body’s metabolic activity. It can also cause you to keep taking the drugs regularly, leading to addiction.
You put your life and mental health at risk when you abuse drugs. You can abuse over-the-counter drugs like pain relief and malaria medicine.
Drug abuse can make your body to be antibiotic resistance and susceptible to various infections.
Drug addiction can leave you with trauma, depression, mental disorders, and premature death.
You can live a better, healthier, and longer life when you avoid hard drugs and drug abuse.
It is time to seek help and stop drug addictions.
10. Drink safe water
As simple as it sounds, drinking safe water regularly keeps you in healthy and long life.
Water contamination can easily occur. It is your responsibility to ensure that the water you consume is safe.
Water contaminants include faeces, dust, and chemicals.
When you find yourself where you are unsure of the water source, boil the water for a minimum of one minute.
Allow the water to cool naturally, then consume. Drinking unsafe water causes sicknesses like cholera, polio, and diarrhoea.
Drinking safe water and staying hydrated boosts your health and it can make you live longer. Remember, water is life!
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the habits that help you live longer?
Some habits that can help you live longer are drinking safe water, physical exercise, reducing salt and sugar intake, maintaining a healthy Body Mass Index, managing stress, eating healthy diets, getting adequate rest and sleep, and maintaining positive relationships.
What are the effects of smoking?
Smoking affects your body system to cause heart disease, depression, cancer, mental disorders, lung disease, and anxiety.
Does Physical exercise lead to a longer life?
Yes, physical exercise can make you live longer.
Conclusion
Living a healthy longer life is a product of our choice of lifestyle. Careless habits can cut short your life while intentional living can make you live longer.
In Summary, these are habits that guarantee you a healthy and long life.
- Eating healthy diets,
- Regularly drinking safe water,
- Engaging in physical exercise,
- Getting enough rest and sleep,
- Avoiding hard drugs and drug abuse, and
- Avoiding smoking and alcohol.
Health is wealth. It is time to start your journey toward a healthy longer life by imbibing these habits.
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