longevity

We can’t stop the clock, but it’s possible that by choosing the right foods in our diets, we can slow it down a little. The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer Cookbook features meals that attack what the authors refer to as the “Four Horsemen of Aging”: oxidative damage, inflammation, glycation and stress. When we choose meals that prevent these effects in our bodies, we can protect ourselves from getting old before our time.

I am currently trying to starve a cold (due less to science, and more to a phlegm-induced lack of appetite), so I guess this might count as good news. According to recent research reported by USA Today — "Could 'extreme' low-cal diets bring longer, healthier life?" — living in a state of constant deprivation might help extend your life. (Though it's debatable just how happy you'll be in the meantime if you have to forsake fried chicken, key lime pie and pork belly sandwiches. But maybe I'm just projecting.)

You might think that being happy is the fairly obvious answer to all of your problems. But it turns out that happiness might in fact be the worst solution ever to one of life's biggest problems: the inevitability of death. According to a recent story by Richard Alleyne in the Telegraph — "Feeling happy? Don't be too smug as chances are you will die young" — people who are excessively joyful are more likely to die young than their more dour peers.

Few things in life are as fine a balance as sleep, and it's tough to get it just right. Too little sleep has been linked to all kinds of chronic problems, from unflattering eye bags to obesity, diabetes and premature death. And now it turns out that either too little or too much sleep can unduly age your brain, and even speed up the onset of dementia.

You've no doubt noticed that in developed countries, women almost always have a higher life expectancy than men. Being a woman, it would seem, can add not just months but years to your life. Over at the Good Men Project — Macho Men Die Early — Hugo Schwyzer offers some thoughts on one of the reasons men die earlier, on average: many of them are simply "too macho" to seek out health care.