I Have Seen Longevity Naked and It Brought Me Some Surprises: Here I Tell You About Them

In 2002, in Madrid, the WHO made official a term that has had wonderful consequences in the lives of millions of people: active aging. With it, it reminds us of the importance of taking care of ourselves and gives us guidelines focused essentially on health and well-being. But aging well requires much more than taking care of the body, and to better understand how to achieve it I have decided to strip longevity bare and show you its essence. Below, I tell you what I discovered by doing so:

1. Biology matters less than you think

Although we still cannot be sure of the exact percentage that genetics has in our aging, almost all research places it between 20% and 50%. The rest of the influencing factors are a direct consequence of lifestyle habits and the environment. So it is important to dismantle many people’s favorite excuse: “it’s just that in my family everyone dies young,” because lifestyle is a stronger determinant of health than inheritance. Genetics loads the gun, but habits pull the trigger.

2. You need to have friends and give and receive their hugs

The longest study ever carried out on human happiness—the Harvard study, which has followed the same people for more than eighty years—reached a forceful conclusion: the most powerful predictor of longevity and well-being in old age is not cholesterol, nor the strength of your muscles, it is the quality of personal relationships. Maintaining active bonds reduces stress, strengthens cognitive health, increases resilience, and, above all, gives meaning to getting up in the morning.

3. Loneliness kills more than tobacco

Chronic loneliness shortens life expectancy as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and it is linked to nearly one million deaths each year. A meta-analysis that included approximately 2.2 million people found that those who reported social isolation had a 30% greater risk of premature death from any cause, compared with people with more active social networks. In Spain, more than two million people over the age of 65 live alone, a figure expected to reach 6 million in the next decade. And yet, we still treat loneliness as an emotional problem, not as a public health problem.

4. The economy matters as much as medicine

Poverty kills more than alcohol, obesity, and hypertension. Financial stress is a disease that kills. Adults with low incomes die on average nine years earlier than their wealthier peers. Old age amplifies everything: health if you have resources and illness if you do not. Talking about aging without talking about the economy is talking about half the problem.

5. Leisure is not a luxury, it is a survival factor

And we are not talking only about exercising, which is indeed very good, but about having purposeful activities (volunteering, art, music, gardening, anything that generates in you a state of “flow”). Chronic boredom in old age is not free; it has a biological cost.

6. Legal autonomy is as vital as physical autonomy

Good longevity requires that we decide how we want to live if one day we cannot decide. Our legal system offers mechanisms to protect your autonomy in the event of a later incapacity: preventive power of attorney, self-guardianship, and the living will. Almost nobody uses them. In Spain, only 280,000 people have officially registered their living will or advance directives. Sixty percent of older adults do not know that this tool exists, and yet, when it is explained to them, 70% say they would use it.

7. Curiosity and the desire to learn are the medicine for having good cognitive health

Sustained intellectual stimulation builds what neuroscientists call cognitive reserve: a kind of brain cushion that delays the appearance of degenerative symptoms. Learning something new after the age of 60 is not eccentricity, it is prevention.

8. The environment matters more than we imagine

Urban accessibility, air quality, the possibility of walking to the supermarket, good medical centers… these are basic pillars of longevity. The environment where we age is not just scenery. A population designed to promote longevity is not only condescending toward its older people; it is above all intelligent and is betting on a better future.

9. How you imagine yourself aging determines how you will age

People with a positive image of aging live longer and better than those who associate it only with decline and loss. It is not self-help positive thinking. It is that perception activates or inhibits behaviors of self-care, social connection, and the search for purpose. If you believe that aging is only deterioration, you are out of luck, because your prophecy will come true.

Learn to strip longevity bare in order to design your best future

These nine dimensions we have talked about have something in common: all of them are built before they are needed. A social network does not appear on its own at 75. Savings do not arise out of nowhere at 70. Legal autonomy does not activate if it has not been formalized. Purpose is not invented in a nursing home. Aging well is, to a great extent, a project. Not guaranteed, not linear, not free from blows of bad luck. But in the end, one of your main projects. And projects, to achieve success, need to start long before the last moment. It is your responsibility to understand what your best longevity depends on.
 

Written by: María Jesús González Espejo