The 1 Lifestyle Choice A Longevity Expert Prioritises For A Longer Life

You might have seen recently that Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and heart surgeon Dr Jeremy London shared their three rules for a longer life: eat well, move enough, and prioritise sleep too. 

But speaking to Business Insider, Dr Sofiya Milman, who studies the lifestyles of centenarians for a living, said she thinks one of those lifestyle choices is more important than the others. 

“We have people who live to 100 and are healthy, so our bodies are capable. It’s biologically plausible, therefore we just have to tweak things to get us there,” she told the publication.

Which lifestyle choice should we prioritise?

The boring answer is all of them – a combination of “exercising, eating a healthy diet, reducing stress in my life, and getting enough sleep” is key to the experts’ own routine, she said. 

But when asked which factor people should prioritise if they had to pick one (and it’s important to remember most of us don’t have to choose), she went with exercise. 

Muscle mass loss, also called sarcopenia, is a normal part of ageing that begins around the age of 30.

But it’s associated with a higher risk of falls, increased risk of dementia, and general mortality among older people. 

You can fight sarcopenia through resistance and strength training. 

It’s almost never too late to start – those who picked up their first weight aged 71 saw fantastic results. 

But ultimately, she said, the best exercise is the one you’ll actually stick with. 

We don’t need to be perfect

In her studies of centenarians, Dr Milman said the things we’d expect to correlate to a longer life don’t necessarily always ring true among “super-agers”.

“They drink the same amount of alcohol, they exercise the same – no less, no more – they’re just as likely to be overweight,” she shared. 

“And so there isn’t a lifestyle feature that we can say, well, if you do that, then you’ll live to be a hundred.” 

Of course, lifespan is a different thing to healthspan, which is how long you feel well and physically healthy. 

So trying to stave off chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and cognitive decline for as long as possible is ideal, she advised.