How to Boost Your Longevity in Your 60s

How to Boost Your Longevity in Your 60s

By Mark Stibich, PhD

Updated August 14, 2019

Your 60s are a big decade. You may be planning to put your work-life behind you and retiring. You may have more time to spend on yourself. While all of the change can be exciting and scary, what better time to start working on a "new you" than in this phase of your life? This "new you" can be even more focused on being healthy and feeling great. Make your retirement not about "resting" but about reaching your maximum health and working toward a long life of health and happiness. Here are ten things that can get you started.

1

It's Not Too Late for a Healthy Lifestyle

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Don't think that just because you are in your 60s, all your cards have been dealt when it comes to health. Even the changes you make now can significantly improve your health and, in some cases, reverse some of the damage that has been done in your younger years.

One of the biggest longevity mistakes that people make is thinking it is "too late" for them. Healthy steps like getting your weight under control, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, exercising at least 2.5 hours a week, and not smoking will improve your health and longevity at any age.

2

Keep Up Your Sex Life

Sex is an important part of life and health. You can have an active, rewarding sex life your entire life. Some even say that healthy sex life can increase your life expectancy (as if you needed another reason to keep it up). Learn about some of the issues around sex for men and women in their 60s, and take action to maintain a healthy, rewarding sex life.

3

Make Time to Take Care of Your Brain

Your brain likes problems. The brain likes something to puzzle over and figure out. It loves making new connections and learning, a practice that studies have shown keeps your brain healthy. Be sure to take steps to keep your brain happy in retirement.

Avoid falling into too much of a routine and keep your brain supplied with new and challenging thoughts. From puzzles to learning new skills, more and more research shows that a healthy brain into old age depends on constant intellectual stimulation. Take some courses, learn new things, and stay smart.

4

Make Time to Take Care of Your Body

Don't let your body retire when you do. Now that you have moved on from work and the kids have moved out, it is time to focus on your health. Sure, before you were busy and perhaps felt like you didn't always have time to exercise and cook healthy meals, but you should have more control of time now.

Use that time to undo some of the unhealthy things that you have done to your body. Lose weight, exercise, and eat fruits and vegetables (it really can be that simple). Make a plan for your body during retirement. Keep your body busy and active. Not only will you feel better, but you will likely live longer and healthier.

5

Think Positively About Aging

If you can develop a positive attitude toward aging, you could add up to 7.5 years to your life according to some researchers. Having a positive attitude affects how your body deals with stress and how it impacts your behaviors. Spend some time thinking about the positive aspects of age like wisdom and having more time for your own spiritual growth. See how many positive things about aging you can think up and remind yourself of those positives.

6

Take Control of Your Medical Care

Not understanding your medications and treatments can increase your risk of death. Research has found that patients who do not ask questions or do not understand their medical conditions or medication management are at an increased risk of complications and death.

Increase your chances of having a good outcome and maintaining good health by asking questions and taking the time to research and understand your medical conditions until you fully understand them. It could save your life.

7

Keep Getting Tested

By now you should be used to preventative care and screenings. Make sure you keep going and getting everything checked in your 60s. It will start to seem like a lot of exams and tests, but those doctors appointments can help detect illness early when it can be treated with the highest rate of success.

Make a commitment to keep up with the preventative care and screening plan you develop with your doctor. You might even decide to find some way to make screenings fun by bringing a good book or giving yourself a reward like a favorite lunch or purely fun appointment afterward. Adding just a little bit of something to look forward will make it a lot easier to keep those appointments.

8

Learn About Hormones and Aging

Your hormones continue to change throughout your life, including as you age. Some people believe that these changes in hormones are what causes aging. The truth is more complicated.

Before you look into hormone therapies, take some time to learn the facts about hormones and aging and be sure to talk to a doctor (who isn't selling anything) about how hormone supplements might be able to help you.

9

Use Your Time Productively

Retirement is all about time and having time to do what you want. Once you stop working, you gain at least 40 hours a week, which can be great for the ​busybody, but there are a few dangers associated with all of this extra time like television.

The average retired person watches over 4 sedentary hours of TV a day. That is the time that could, and should, be spent doing things that are healthy for your brain and body. It could be time spent exercising, socializing, volunteering, cooking healthy foods, and doing other things that you love.

Things like watching too much TV can become an easy, unhealthy habit in a matter of days. Take control of your time in retirement and use it to make yourself healthier and happier.

10

Maintain Your Social Life

You've planned financially for retirement, but have you planned socially? Going from an active working environment where you interact with others throughout the day to being home can be a tremendous social change.

Make a plan for getting out and being with people on a regular basis. Social contact can improve health because interacting with people helps you manage emotions, stress, and helps you maintain good habits. Make a plan for how you want your social life to be in retirement and then act on it.

Bottom Line

Your 60s should be an active time of your life spent enjoying everything you've worked for, including your health. Don't see retirement or semi-retirement only as a phase to plan financially, be sure that you are ready to take care of your mind and body for years to come.

10 Simple Steps to Increase Your Life Expectancy

By Mark Stibich, PhD

Updated November 04, 2019

Life expectancy can be increased with simple steps and changes. This guide will help you find ways to increase your life expectancy, improve your health, and feel great as you age. Let's start with the easiest: increase your life expectancy with sunlight.

1

Go Outside for a Longer Life Expectancy

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Life expectancy can be increased simply by going outside. See, what happens when you go outside is that your skin gets exposed to sunlight. That exposure triggers cells in your skin to produce vitamin D. This vitamin (really a prohormone, but let's not worry about that here) is essential for bone health and is turning out to be important in depression, heart disease, diabetes, and just about everything.

Some estimate that 50% of adults have low levels of vitamin D because we simply don't get outside that much (sitting by a window doesn't count, the glass filters too much of the sunlight). This is a shame because maintaining vitamin D levels has to be the easiest and cheapest way to improve your health and increase your life expectancy.

Getting outside for just 15 minutes a day and exposing your hands and face to sunlight is enough to maintain vitamin D levels in most cases.

If you are concerned about your vitamin D levels, your doctor can order a simple blood test that will tell you if your levels are low. If for some reason you can't get outside enough, there are vitamin D supplements that you can take (but getting outside is a better option, if you can).

Elderly people need to pay special attention to their vitamin D levels. If you are a caregiver, be sure to assist your loved one in getting outside just a little bit every day. Not only will with improve vitamin D levels, but it could also improve sleep because sunlight also regulates another hormone in the body called melatonin that controls your sleep cycle.

10 Ways You Might Be Sabotaging Your Health

2

Hang Out With Friends

Life expectancy can be increased by just hanging out with your friends and family. The more connected someone is, the better their overall health. Having positive relationships with a spouse, friends, and family is the best way to be connected.

We are not sure why relationships play a role in health and life expectancy. It could be that people in positive relationships are less likely to take on risky behaviors and are more likely to take care of themselves. It could be that having people around you reduces the impact of stress on your health.

People who are engaged in "meaningful" relationships have better health and better life expectancies.

One way of improving your relationships with people is to get in the habit of telling good stories. Stories are how we communicate with one another, and telling a good story strengthens communications. I can't count the number of times I've been on the phone with someone and was just talking about the weather or giving a dry update on my family. Instead, I should be telling a story about a funny thing my kids did or something crazy that happened at work. Stories keep relationships alive.

So make more time for friends and family. Go do things together (create stories together), and make a real effort to improve your communication with them (whether by e-mail, phone or in person) by having a good story always ready for the telling.

3

Improve Life Expectancy With Daily Exercise

Improve your life expectancy with a commitment to daily exercise. Why daily? Well, after carefully considering all the research and ​exercise recommendations out there and knowing a bit about how people form habits, I have to conclude that a daily exercise commitment is a great way to improve your life expectancy, your health, and your energy level. Here's why:

A study showed that people who exercise vigorously for around 3 hours a week had DNA and cells that were 9 years younger than nonexercisers. Three hours a week is a little more than 30 minutes a day.

Forget the study, though. What I know (from personal experience and from observing others) is that if you go more than 2 days without exercising, you are in grave danger of quitting your routine. Somehow it is way too easy to slip from three days of nonexercise to three weeks of nonexercise to three months of nonexercise.

The easiest way to create an exercise habit is through daily repetition. When you promise yourself to exercise daily, you may skip a day but then get back on the program the following day. If you are exercising three times a week and, say, skip Friday, then you would have gone from Wednesday to Monday without exercising – a total of 4 days with no exercise (very dangerous, from a habit-building perspective). For life expectancy, it is more important that you exercise year after year than go through fits and starts of intense exercise followed by no exercise.

The other reason I feel that daily exercise is important is that daily exercise will help improve your sleep and your energy level. It is important to just rev up your whole body each day. Remember, daily exercise doesn't have to mean going to the gym every day. Home exercises, such as yoga, stretching, free weights and more, can be incredibly effective.

4

Floss Daily for a Longer Life Expectancy

The fact that flossing daily can extend life expectancy falls in the weird-but-true category.

Flossing does two things: it prevents gum disease (that's rather obvious), and it prevents heart disease (not so obvious). Preventing both of these together is what adds years to your life.

When you floss, you help prevent your gums from becoming inflamed. That's a good thing. What is happening when your gums are inflamed is that you have a chronic bacterial infection in your mouth. This harms your arteries through two mechanisms: the bacteria find their way into your arteries and hang out (causing plaques), and your body mounts an immune response to the bacteria in your mouth, causing inflammation (which in turn can cause your arteries to narrow). This makes it hard for your heart to do its job and can lead to heart disease.

Facts About Gum Disease That May Surprise You

There is some debate about how many years you can gain with heart disease. Dr. Perls says 1.5 years, while Dr. Roizen says 6 years. Both of these doctors are gerontologists (aging docs) and have popular books on aging and life expectancy (see reviews: Living To 100, RealAge and You! Staying Young). Who is right? It doesn't matter. Flossing is good for your gums and good for your heart, so we should all just do it.

Of course, this is easier said than done. How do you get into a solid flossing habit? First, you need to make sure you have some floss. There are tons of different kinds of floss (flavored, unflavored, strings, ribbons and on and on). Pick some and give them a try. Next, you have to remember. Put your floss on top of your toothpaste. Hard to forget that way. Then just do it. You already have a habit of brushing your teeth at least twice daily (right? — please say yes), so just anchor your flossing habit to that.

5

More Sex for a Longer Life Expectancy

Your life expectancy may be increased by having more sex.

In one study, men with a high frequency of orgasms showed a 50% reduction in mortality.

This is good news, especially because issues around sex and aging are being taken more and more seriously by the medical community.

Why sex should be linked to life expectancy is something of a mystery. Of course, it could be that healthier people are more likely to have more sex and that the findings linking sex to life expectancy are reflecting this, but I think there is more to it.

We have seen elsewhere that having good relationships and being positive are linked to longer life expectancies. Maybe sex is a market for good, positive relationships. Of course, there could be a direct health benefit as well: sex triggers all sorts of endorphins and hormones in the body. Maybe these help with healthy aging and increasing life expectancy.

But who really cares about the reason? The simple fact is that having more sex is healthy. 

How Sex Can Improve Life Expectancy

6

Be Like A Vegetarian for Your Life Expectancy

Life expectancy can be linked to three factors that vegetarians excel at fewer bad fats, more antioxidants, and lower weight. Before we go into how being a vegetarian can help your life expectancy, though, we have to define what we mean by a vegetarian.

There are some vegetarians who are "junk food vegetarians." These types of vegetarians eat cheese pizzas and ice cream all day long. That is not good for health or life expectancy. What we mean is the person who is eating lots of vegetables prepared in healthy fats (such as olive oil) while limiting animal products, such as cheese and cream. We'll call this type of vegetarian a "whole foods vegetarian."

The leading cause of death and the number one shortener of life expectancy in the U.S. is heart disease. As your heart ages, there can be a build of gunk in your arteries and your arteries themselves can become harder. This causes your blood pressure to rise and your heart to work harder, leaving you at risk for heart disease. Vegetarians (whole foods vegetarians) have some of the best arteries around because eating healthy vegetables avoids bad fats and other unhealthy foods.

People who eat lots of vegetables also take in lots of antioxidants.

Antioxidants help your body repair some of the damage caused by aging. The more plants you eat (and the greater variety) the more raw materials your body has to make repairs. 

Finally, vegetables simply fill you up with very few calories (if prepared without creams, butter or cheese). A healthy vegetarian diet should help maintain or lose weight. A healthy weight is tied to a longer life expectancy.

So be more like a vegetarian to increase your life expectancy and live healthier.

Top 10 Anti-Aging Foods to Fit Into Your Diet

7

Destress for a Longer Life Expectancy

Life expectancy can be messed up by stress in two major ways. The first way is through the direct, unhealthy effects of stress on your body in the long term. The second way stress may shorten your life expectancy is through the negative behaviors that being stressed triggers. These behaviors include comfort eating and smoking. Learn to relax through de-stressing techniques or meditation to keep your life expectancy up where it should be.

Stress has been linked to dozens of health conditions, including heart disease or cancer.

Stress has also been linked (no surprise) to feeling irritable and not sleeping well. By focusing on stress, you can improve your quality of life right now while improving your long-term health and life expectancy too. That's a pretty good deal.

You can de-stress through a wide range of stress reduction techniques. My personal favorite is called the "relaxation response." This is a scientifically proven breathing technique that will help train your body not to respond to the stressful events in your life.

My other more long-term relaxation technique is meditation. By learning how to meditate, you not only calm your body, but you begin to train your mind. This is great for mental fitness, concentration, and (of course) relaxation.

8

Extend Your Life Expectancy Through Screenings and Tests

Improving your life expectancy through medical tests and health screenings is certainly not one of the "fun ways to live longer," but it is, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to add healthy years on to your life.

Medical tests and screenings can help treat diseases early, when they are more treatable, and extend life expectancy even with an illness or disease.

Of course, the challenge is figuring out what tests to take when. Only your doctor can really tell you 100% (every individual is different in terms of risk factors and family history).

I like to think of health screenings as part of a disease prevention program. Preventing diseases (or catching them early) is probably the single best way to add years to your life expectancy. Make a plan today to prevent disease, get everything checked and feel good that you are doing everything you can for a longer life expectancy.

9

Turn Off Your TV for a Longer Life Expectancy

If life expectancy and television watching aren't linked, I'd be shocked. Of course, I can't prove that TV and life expectancy are linked (no one has done a study comparing the life expectancy of TV-watchers and non-watchers, probably because they can't find enough non-watchers for a good study). I really do think that cutting back on television watching would improve most people's health and (therefore) increase their life expectancy. Here are ​a couple of reasons:

• Watching TV makes you inactive. You just sit there burning as few calories as possible, which could lead to weight problems.
• TV makes you eat more junk food. People who are watching TV eat more than those who don't. It's a fact.
• TV makes you antisocial. You are at home, zoned in, instead of talking with real people, face-to-face.
• TV is stressful. The news and many shows are filled with stressful stories. Avoid these, and you may feel things are not so bad after all.
• TV keeps you from doing other things. This is the big one for me. The average person watches something like four hours of TV every day. That is 28 hours a week or more than 1,400 hours a year. If we all just put that time ​into something else (exercise, volunteering, talking with our children), think of what a different world it would be.

Of course, I can't tell you how many years of life you will gain if you quit watching TV (it depends on your weight and what you do with the extra time), but I can tell you that you will gain back around 1,400 hours each year (on average).

10

Avoiding Risks Increases Life Expectancy

Life expectancy can be protected by making sure that you don't take any unnecessary risks. For young people, the biggest causes of death aren't diseases or age-related problems.

The most common causes of death for young people are accidents, injuries, and violence.

When you add certain behaviors (such as smoking) to that list (which shortens life expectancy by up to 14 years), you get a list of things to avoid to protect your life expectancy.

Here's the list (I know, it sounds like nagging, but do these things anyway): wear your seat belt, drive defensively, avoid situations that may lead to injury, avoid risky sex, avoid violent situations, don't smoke (or quit smoking if you do smoke) and maintain a healthy weight.

If you can do those things, then you are already increasing your life expectancy. Focus on avoiding obvious risks and dangers. Your body is pretty amazing and will keep going for a long time as long as you keep it out of trouble.

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