45 tips that will help you live to 100 – and love it!

Short on time? A 2018 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association reported that brief bursts of intense activity have the same benefit to your lifespan as the 10-minute bouts recommended by health agencies, as long as you end up getting the same total amount of exercise.

“If you’re socially isolated, you tend to have a heightened inflammatory response. Left unchecked, inflammation gets manifested as disease,” says MacDonald. Research at the University of Helsinki in 2018 showed that lonely people tracked over seven years were much more likely to have a heart attack (43 per cent) or stroke (39 per cent).

Here are 12 simple ways to make friends as an adult. 

People who don’t sleep enough – seven to eight hours is optimal for most – are more likely to develop conditions like diabetes and mental illness. If you can’t resist using your electronic devices before bed, special glasses can minimise the effects of artificial blue light on your sleep.

Discover 11 weird tricks that really do help you go to sleep.

The more often middle-aged men in Finland visited saunas – from once a week to daily – the lower their death rates over a 20-year period. Sauna use appears to lower blood pressure and protect blood vessels. (It may not be recommended if you’re recovering from a heart attack or have angina.)

Try these remedies for high blood pressure.

“If you have protracted stress for a long time, you tend to have elevated levels of cortisol,” says MacDonald. “It’s been shown that your hippocampus atrophies when you bathe it in cortisol over a long time.” Prolonged exposure to emotional stress can reduce survival rates for people with health conditions, raising their death rate over a four-year period by 39 to 43 per cent. Try seeing a problem as a challenge you can tackle and learn from.

Learn 36 ways to make managing stress so much easier. 

Can’t get outside? At Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the United Kingdom, MRI scans of volunteers demonstrated that listening to recorded sounds of the great outdoors can produce a brain response associated with reduced stress.

A 2018 study in The Lancet showed that job stress may be leading men with cardiometabolic diseases (like insulin resistance or high blood pressure) to an earlier death – with a 68 per cent higher risk. The same effect wasn’t seen in women. Guys, stop checking work messages when you’re off the clock.

Boston-based researchers have just shown that optimism increases the odds you’ll live to 85 by 50 per cent if you’re female and 70 per cent for males. Try focusing on all the things you’re grateful for.

Follow these tips to a happier life. 

“As you get older, it becomes more difficult to socially interact in noisy environments,” says Memorial University’s Zendel. Research in his lab and elsewhere is showing that musical training can improve your ability to decipher speech in loud restaurants and bars.

Focus your attention on the speaker and watch their lip movements. Being a good listener is another strategy that can help you stay socially engaged, reducing your loneliness and isolation. Zendel has met people with hearing issues who don’t let others get a word in edgewise. “They know they won’t understand you, so their solution is to keep talking.”