How to live a long life: The art of longevity
What if anything was possible? and… if it was, what would you do, how would you feel and think? I guess, you would make different choices from the ones you are taking now. What if reversing chronic illness was doable without side effects? And, what if our bodies were capable of much more than we know of? Further, what if longevity was possible? Some people can live for long. How to live a long life? If they can, there is a way.
Perhaps, for a moment, you would feel like a child, as children love dreaming and imagining, or like Leonardo da Vinci, as he belived that flying was possible. Da Vinci created the wings and tried flying. He copied the birds. First, people watched him and laughed, but some kept his dreams alive for centuries. “if birds can fly, we can too” they thought. Finally, now, our skies are full of flying machines, and the airplanes are part of reality. “What if anything was possible?”
They can, so we can too.
Dave Asprey, the man behind biohacking, longevity quest, books like “Super Human, wrote:
“Until a decade ago, I never thought I’d make it past eighty, never mind aim for a hundred and eighty. Starting at a yound age I was overweight and chronically ill, with arthritis in my knees when I was just fourteen. By the time I was in my twenties I was prediabetic and suffered from brain fog, fatigue and dozens of other issues we normally associate with aging. My doctors told me I was at a high risk of heart attack or stroke before I was thirty. In short, there was no reason to believe I was going to live a long and/ or healthy life.
Moreover…
Thanks to some wise elders I began working with in the nonprofit anti-aging field, I learned it was possible to prevent additional damage to my cells and even reverse some of the damage that had already occured. […]
With the help of amazing anti-aging doctors and a community of folks who’ve been studying longevity since I was in diapers, I was able to take my biology into my own hands. I reversed my diseases and symptoms and began literally aging backward. If I can turn things around after such poor start, you probably can, too.”
In This Article
Lust for life
Dave Asprey was close to dying. The choices he made in his life, mostly unconscious because of his young age, and the circumstances he lived in for years, destroyed his body. However, the destroyed can be rebuilt. If there is a will, there will be a way. As he said in the words quoted above, he reversed the damage and became younger in the process. Moreover, quantum physics says, that everything is possible at all times. What’s more, everything exists in the quantum field, as possibility. It is us, who can change.
(Quantum physics, also known as quantum mechanics, looks on the most fundamental level of matter and energy. Leonardo da Vinci would love it, as it wants to discover the mechanism of the world, “the very building blocks of nature” (Calltech.edu). It is what the artist was also searching for in his life.)
How to live a long life then?
Yes, it is possible… it depends on wheter you want it, whether you want to live long or not.
People who live long
In a famous book, “The blue zones, 9 lessons for living longer from the people who’ve lived the longest”, Dan Buttner describes communities of people who live for over a hundred years. According to him, these groups of people follow health habits, that help them do, what others see as impossible. They are active, social, joyful. They eat well, exercise, sleep properly. Sardinia in Italy is one of such places. In a village there, for 2 500 inhabitants, 7 of them were over 100 years old. It is a high number, as for the USA for example, statistically for every 5 000 people, just one reaches at least 100 years of age.
To live long, do not become a copy of anybody
Using their exact ways of being would probably not bring the same results, as their habits, diet, are connected to the temperature of the place, humidity, Sun exposure etc. Your specific habits that would help you live the longest must very likely be a bit different, to work with your environment, water, air and other elements that create your world. But, if the Sardinians can, we can too. To answer the question: “How to live a long life”, we take your specific situation into account. To live long, it is not about becoming like a Sardinian, but to live long in your specific environment, air, water and social groups.
Map of Italy
The power of bonds
As Dan Buttner discovered while meeting those who live long, bonds with others are for them very important. Families, friends, closed ones, met often. Further, connections strengthened by conversations, hugs, and attention given to each other. I met such a group of people, they were the elderly climbers. Born before the II World War, and stayed in touch with each other for over 50 years. I wrote about them in our article:
Pro Health longevity. Funny, because they did not have to question how to live a long life, but simply did many things together. Eventually, influenced each other.
“Diet and supplements and exercise programs aren’t what is achieving longevity. Having a faith-based community can add four to 14 years.“
“A long healthy life is no accident“
LOVE, true love is key: “Centenarians are still living near their children and feel loved and the expectation to love. Instead of being mere recipients of care, they are contributors to the lives of their families. They grow gardens to contribute vegetables, they continue to cook and clean.“
Dan Buttner
You see? They have their families around them, children, grandchildren, friends. They share love and hardships, but love flows. The close bonds are the flavour of life. This is when asking questions like “How to live a long life” make sense.
How to live a long life
Rebuild
I am someone who, as mr Asprey reveresed the damage that I unconciously had done to my body. And I am still in the process of change, of healing my tissues and cells. My body feels and looks better and better in the process as well. I remember sleepless nights, that aged my face, and made walking up the stairs more difficult than a year or two before. I remember how surprised I was, both when I felt weak, and at the moment of returned strength.
“Wow, we really can!” I thought. We know that not sleeping well makes us feel and look tired, and if the experience continues, the skin sags and wrinkles show up. It is on the surface. And of course it is important, but these are the signs of more serious damage that happens on the inside of our bodies. In the healthy longevity quest, our looks are crucial mirrors of the internal state of health.
The question is: why does sleep affect our aging so much, and how is our longevity connected to sleep?
The answer contains many aspects, but one of the most crucial ones is rootted down inside each and every cell of our bodies: telomers. In his “Super Human” book, Asprey gives a roadmap to health, that he also created when on his path back to life. He tries to answer the question: How to live a long life, in his own life, which is very authentic. Unsurprisingly, the crucial elements include the simplest things: sleep and telomers, which influence each other. Discovery of the molecular nature of these small parts of the chromosomes won Elizabeth Blackburn a Nobel prize in 2009.
Even one night of Sleep deficiency matters
If it is daytime on your side of the world, may I ask you: “How do you feel right now? Do you feel sleepy?” The scientists are certain that if you answered “yes” to the question, it means that you do not sleep enough at night. If it happens often or you suffer on insomnia, it has a direct impact on your health. Even one night filled with disrupted sleep will affect your mood, create stronger emotional reactions, stress, sense of lack of concentration, feeling of hunger and more. Moreover, disregulated sleep shortens telomers in your body.
Read more about sleep in our lengthy article: How to sleep well
Telomers, length and sleep. A bit of science
They are very small, but their health impacts you greately. We all have them in each cell of the body. Their length has a crucial importance for you. The shorter they are, the older you feel and look, the weaker you become and more ill. If they are long (as they can be regenerated), you feel, look younger and live longer. Telomers, like tiny caps, are located at the ends of chromosomes. The chromosomes, which are a part of the internal structure of your cells, carry genetic information (in your DNA, it contains the instructions for all the proteins the organism will synthesize [nih.gov]). You have got 46 of them in each cell.
The telomers and illnesses
The telomers protect the chromosomes and the genetic information they carry. As sleep activity impacts them greately, imagine how crucial it is to improve your sleep activity. If you do not have a good night’s sleep, your telomers become shorter, and chromosomes receive poorer protection, which damages the genetic information in your DNA. Moreover, in practical terms it means illnesses like heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, sagging skin and more. Finally, telomers are one of the most important answers to your question”How to live a long life”.
In our Longevity Quest we take a closer look on a connection between sleep and telomers and what we can do to lengthen them.
Telomers like to be long
As said before, telomers are located at the ends of your chromosomes. Further, if for some reason your telomers become shorter, your chromosomes become affected as well. In result, the aging processes speed up and illnesses show up like drops of water during rain. For example, in your body you have special cells, called CD8. Furthermore, they are the fighters of your immune system. These cells, when they are biologically young, protect you from viruses and bacterias.
As long as their telomers are long, they are a highly successful in fighting alien cells in your blood stream. But, when they age, meaning when their telomers shorten, you get a cold much more often, or even potentially systemic inflammatory response. Finally, what protects these cells? A good night’s sleep.
Stress, sleep and telomers
Quality of your sleep impacts your stress levels. If you are not well-rested, your emotional response becomes more severe, as well as the memory of bad experiences. Elizabeth Blackburn conducted an experiment on mothers of severly ill children. She measured their stress levels and the length of telomers. Finally, the results showed clearly, that higher levels of stress, chronic stress, destroyed the telomers day by day.
Be elastic
The good news is, that telomers are elastic and can be lengthened. Around the world, in our global community, there are over 300 thousand people who are 100 years old or older. They are a true inspiration for those wanting to know how to live long. It is the health of their cells that leads to that. Moreover, understanding the telomers in our body brings us closer to living longer and being healthier. We know that sleep is important, but when we discover that the quality of sleep impacts the telomers, our sleep activity becomes super essential.
So, how to lengthen the telomers? Let’s have a good night’s sleep first.
Sleep, telomers and longevity – the number of hours to sleep
In 2014 National Sleep Foundation asked the Americans how the way they slept affected their lives. 45% of them stated that poor sleep impacted their days at least once a week. Lack of good night’s sleep, leads to more than change in mood. It shortens the telomers as well, disregulates your cravings and excellerates negative thinking. Good sleep is the most regenerative activity we have in our lives (according to Blackburn and Epel “The telomere effect”). Longer sleep means longer telomers and supports the longevity quest.
So, how many hours of sleep is enough for our telomers to remain long?
In a well-known Whietehall II cohort study the researchers wanted to find out whether the connection between shortening of telomers and poor sleep was true. The study took place in 2012, and included 434 men and women, aged 63,3 years on average.
The conclusion:
“There was a linear association between sleep duration and leukocyte telomere length in men but not in women (P = 0.035). Men reporting shorter sleep duration had shorter telomeres, independently of age, body mass index, smoking, educational attainment, current employment, cynical hostility scores and depressive symptoms. Telomeres were on average 6% shorter in men sleeping 5 hours or fewer compared with those sleeping more than 7 hours per night.” Marta Jackowska, Pubmed “Short sleep duration is associated with shorter telomere length in healthy men: findings from the Whitehall II cohort study”
Their conclusion was, that lack of good night’s sleep leads to weakening of ones health in older years.
Sleep hygene: the quality, number of hours and rythm of sleep
In another study, the reserchers found out, that if you sleep well and long, your telomers remain in good condition for decades. Healthy telomers support the pursuit of longevity. We know now that sleeping for 7 hours on average is good for you. But what about the rythm of sleep? By rythm of sleep we mean the time you fall asleep and wake up. It transpires, that if you set up a similar sleep and wake up time each night, you will help regenerate the telomers. They strengthen the chromosomes as a consequence, which imapacts the vital processes of your body.
Being one wholistic being
In our previous article, we talked about a book by Paul McKenna, a world renown hypnotherapist. We forwarded his brilliant idea, that to have a good night’s sleep, it is best to look at it as a wholistic experience, from a few angels. Light, bed, food, stress-relaxation, self-talk, sleep habits, which include similar time of falling asleep and waking up, eating before going to bed and more. We begin to feel how to live long by upgrading our sleep habits daily. When we do that, which according to him is quite simple, we help our telomers, and they lengthen our lives in response.
The steps to heal
- Give yourself time before falling asleep that is not interrupted by telephones, computers, watching TV. Switch them off. Relax and slow down. If you like to read using Kindle for example, you may try to read a standard book instead. Blue light emited by the screens reduces secretion of melatonin, a sleep hormon. Each type of light supresses the secretion of melatonin, but blue light is the most destructive.
- Avoid taking naps during the day, and focus on sleeping at night only.
- If you experience high levels of stress, try to see the dificult situation that created the difficult emotions as a challenge instead of drama.
- Take a walk in nature. Green colour affects our liver, and liver is a place where anger gets created. The more relaxed you are, and surrounded by green plants, the calmer you will feel.
- Listen to calm music before falling asleep.
- Do some stretching or simple yoga exercises.
“The telomere effect”
Some of the suggestions were inspired by the trully great book about telomers “The telomere effect”, written by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel. I highly suggest reading this book as it is well-written and easy to read. I have reread several chapters to fully understand the connection between the chromosomes, telomeres, longevity quest, mitochondria and other parts of our internal ecosystem. They are very very tiny, but have a great power.
Emotional independence
Emotional independence: a powerful emotional path to longevity and better sleep
What if I told you, that through one specific switch in your attitude, you become much more peaceful and start sleeping beter, which supports your longevity quest? And it is not about taking pills. It is something so powerful, that it would make you feel better day after day, night after night, improve your relationships, help your spine, lead you to relaxation and more. It is your mental health, emotional independence. The emotional well-being, when you start creating your desired emotions, without waiting for anything or anyone to help you feel that.
If you react to what other people do or say, by becoming sad, depressed, nervous or even happy… know, that it is showing you something profound. This reaction in you tells you, that you let other people control your emotional states, while they can be created by you. Our strong reactions to the outer world impact our health in a big way. To know how to change that and become more relaxed and in peace with life and other people, read our article:
Make 1/3 of your life much better.
Not through the use of drugs or expensive treatments, neither blood transfusions or exercise. Simply, focus on sleep. Longevity experts, including the Nobel prize winner dr Elizabeth Blackburn, are sure of this: sleep has a wide impact on our health and future. Finally, You spend roughly 6 to 8 hours sleeping. Eventually, let’s make it as important as it truly is. When looking for an answer to a question: how to live a long life, we focus on one icrucial fact you must know to live longer: sleep and the telomers, small parts of your cells, that predict your longevity.
Your thought moves the muscles, bones of your hand
Everything is possible
Indeed, the more we know about the way our bodies are built, the more fascinated we may feel, and in control of our health and lives. Moreover, young or old, the body is simply amazing. With the organs responsible for different functions, cells, DNA, thoughts and feelings. Blood and intelligence. Just move your finger, and see that it is your thought that starts the movement of the bones, muscles, nerves and tissues that are your finger and hand. Eventually, it is Your will, thought makes them move. Finally, You are that powerful.
Believe even before science proves it
In this article, we looked on our bodies from a biological point of view, and discovered tiny parts of our cells, that define the length of our lives and their closely connectivity to the quality of our sleep. We saw that many seemingly impossible things are indeed possible, before science proves them to be. Leonardo believed and knew that his dreams were doable, before technology made them real. There are many answers to the question: How to live a long life. The wonderful thing is, that longevity is an art, play with it! and let us know
For you and me, all of us, our dreams and hopes are connected to and rooted in the health of our telomers.
Have a great day
With love
Martyna
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Suggested reading
- Elizabeth Blackburn, Elissa Epel “The Telomere Effect”
- Dave Asprey “Super Human”
- Dan Buettner “The blue zones”
Books that help you know how to live a long life
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