In this new article you’ll learn how to live long life. Advancements in medical care and technology are allowing us to live longer; but there is much more to life than what science can give us. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle that includes good nutrition, exercise, activities, interaction, and reducing stress are all great steps that will help to launch you on your way to growing younger and living an active healthy life.

How To Live Long Life:

1. Eat More Fruit and Vegetables

In addition to exercise, the food you put into your body is the most important piece of the long-term health puzzle. Although most of us understand this mission’s critical component, our day-to-day activities seem to conspire against us getting exactly what we need. We are constantly putting food sources into our bodies that are less than ideal, and we are paying the price with our future health and lifespan.

While our modern world has been responsible for some of the most important innovations and time-savers in the history of man, the area of food is one that should have been left alone.

We are currently living in one of the most exciting times in the history of humanity – new tools and technologies are creating breakthroughs in all spectrum’s of our lives, and we are enjoying a connected global community like never before. Though there is a flip side to this go-go pace and pressure, we have been able to use the natural adaptation powers that humans possess to keep pushing forward, seeing just how fast we can really go.

And while this kind of pace is incredible and exciting for the tech, research, medical, and business worlds, when it comes to food products, things get a little bit out of hand. While our options of food stuffs in the past were limited to what was available in our local area and what was in season, the globalization and manufacturing of food has changed that dramatically. Now we can buy processed foods at incredibly low prices and enjoy almost instant meals – something that dovetails perfectly with our fast-paced world, but doesn’t take into account the dangers that these new foods possess.

We are seeing that people around the world are choosing poorer and poorer options for fuel – which is exactly what food is. The more we turn to processed food stuffs and away from the natural foods we have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years, the more we see disease and obesity levels jump through the roof. We need to take control of our diets and bring back a sense of balance, or we’re going to continue to dig our graves with our teeth.

The idea of a balanced diet is a fine one, but you need to make sure that you are balancing the right components in the right amounts.

While occasional processed food is not going to throw everything out of whack, we do need to turn to the most powerful and natural sources of food that we have – fruits and vegetables. Loaded with everything a human body needs to thrive, these foods were the products that got our world to where it is right now; they are the fuel that civilization and history was built upon. And while a great and many people are turning to real and natural foods like fruits and vegetables in an effort to get healthy, we need to work diligently to demonstrate how effective this switch can be and the long-term benefits of making the change – not only to save ourselves, but to save our loved ones and future generations as well.

2. Drink Tea and Red Wine

There is a lot of attention in the health and wellness world paid to the food you eat and the exercise you partake in. And while these are two big cornerstones of keeping yourself in tip-top condition and boosting your overall life expectancy, the fact of the matter is that there are other variables that can have a dramatic impact on your health. One of the most important areas to pay attention to is the liquids that you are putting into your body – the stuff you choose to drink.

Remember that much of our body is completely made of water. We need to make sure that the liquid we decide to put into our bodies (materials that are much more quickly absorbed into the body than solids) are boosting our health and not poisoning us. And though it’s tough to beat water (something we’ll talk about in a little bit), if you’re looking for a boost of flavor, a glass of tea or red wine is a fantastic alternative.

Change out your preferred morning drink and watch your overall health shoot through the roof along with your life expectancy.

The standard morning beverage for many people around the world is a cup (or gallon) of coffee with cream and sugar. And though there is research that has shown some health benefits of caffeine, the other components make this a terribly unhealthy drink. You’ve probably felt the effects of drinking too much coffee before – shaky hands, headaches, etc – but if you switch to tea, you’ll never have to worry about something like that again.

Perfectly hot and amazingly tasty, tea also has the added benefit of being packed to the brim with all kinds of antioxidants. Responsible for not only cleaning house in your blood stream but also attacking and fighting back those nasty little cancer cells, the more antioxidants you can get into your body the better – and if you can get them first thing in the morning, all the better.

While there are some that would decry the benefits of any alcohol, red wine has shown time and time again to boost the health of responsible drinkers.

While tea has been demonstrated to be a better health-wise than coffee, the jury is still a little bit out about the long-term health benefits of red wine. Also richly loaded with antioxidants, there is a bit more work that needs to go into making sure you have the right red wine selected to give you the long-term health benefits you are looking for. First, not any old wine will do – and while whites will give you a small boost, they are not the best choice. You need to choose a full-bodied red, preferably something dry – and stay away from the Zins of the world that pose as reds but are really something else entirely. A glass or two (and no more) a night has shown to give a dramatic boost to your overall health, but you need to make sure you are drinking responsibly.

SEE ALSO: 10 Tips How To Be Green At Home And Make Your Life Eco-Friendly

3. Drink More Water

The single most important resource in the world is water – covering most of the area of our great planet, every single life form that lives or grows on Earth needs water in some capacity or another, and that goes for people as well. As natural a material as it gets, life itself is interlinked and intertwined with water to the extent that one without the other has no meaning – to boost our overall health and well-being as well as the chances of living a long and rewarding life, we need to make sure we are getting enough clean and cool water to thrive.

As essential a building block to life as there is, we would be nothing without water.

Something that we rarely (if ever) think about is the simple fact that we are mostly water. Sure, we are made up of a million other components – bones, muscle, organs, and the like – but when it comes down to the main ingredient to our very existence we are mostly water, like anything else on our great planet.

Used in just about every single facet of our bodily functions, a steady supply of clean, fresh water is absolutely essential for living any kind of healthy life – without it our brains would cease to function, our blood would run as thick as syrup and overload our hearts, and our lives would end. But beyond the maintenance function that it provides, it is also the catalyst for many of the operations in our life – cells need it to reproduce and keep us alive, our bodies need it to heal and repair itself, and our central nervous systems depend on it to rely the messages from the brain to every inch of our bodies. Without water, we would be nothing.

The average person’s water intake is dangerously low – you need to be absolutely certain that you are drinking the optimum amount of water each and every day to boost your lifespan and dramatically increase your health.

Though most of us understand the critical component that water plays in our day-to-day life, too many of us are not getting enough water to promote a healthy lifestyle. With so many other options on the market for beverages (with too many people erroneously claiming that those options are “mostly water”) and the relatively flavorless taste of water, people opt for the short-term fix and pleasure of less than healthy options. While not poison in the sense that it will kill us instantly, these other liquids are similar to poison in that they are crippling our bodies from the inside. Sure, it’s a slower process,

but it’s a damaging problem none the less – our bodies have evolved over millions of years to need clean, fresh water to handle all of the processes in our body.

The other problem is one that we find even in people who only drink water, and that’s the fact that most often we don’t drink enough of it. A couple of glasses a day may feel like the right amount, but the truth is that our bodies are working overtime in a dehydrated state too much of the time. Boost your intake by at least three glasses a day and you will see dramatic increases in your overall health.

4. Eat Chocolate

One of the most satisfying and delicious treats the world has ever known, chocolate has been prized for years and years all over the world as a delicacy. There were some ancient cultures that prized this product so much that people would go their entire lives without having a single bit – all of the chocolate in the land was held in reserve for the most special occasions and only the wealthy had access to it.

And while chocolate has been made available to just about anyone in the world, it is under a new attack of sorts – people have been shouting from the rooftops about the dangers to your health of eating too much chocolate. And while there is some evidence to show the fact that too much chocolate can and will harm you, this is true of just about anything.

As luck would have it, chocolate isn’t all bad for you – there are almost three hundred different compounds in this deliciously dark treat that can actually make you healthier and happier.

Yes, you chocolate lovers read that correctly – while too much chocolate may only make your local clothing store happy, when you eat the right amounts, you can expect dramatic boosts to your well-being. First, the right kinds of chocolate have been shown to release serotonin into the blood stream, actually making you feel happier in the moment that you are eating the chocolate. If you’ve ever felt better when eating a chocolate bar, it wasn’t just a mental association – your body is reacting to the chocolate in a favorable way. There are other components in the chocolate as well that cause these kinds of feelings (tryptophan and phenyllethylamin being two of them) so you are getting a major dose of the feel-goods with this delicious food stuff.

On top of that there are compounds that will actually boost your overall and long-term health called oleic acid and epicatechin, ingredients that boost your good cholesterol level as well as give your blood vessels the kind of boost they need to transport more and more nutrients all over your body.

If you are serious about unlocking the health benefits of chocolate, you need to make sure that you are eating the right kinds in the right amounts – but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from the “lesser” chocolates all the time.

There is a bit of a rub here though, in that not all chocolate is created the same. There are a lot of people that would like to capitalize on the love of chocolate across the world, and most of these products are cheap imitations from the real stuff loaded down with sugar and other additives that completely and totally negate the positive effects. Make sure you are buying the best and most complete chocolate possible for health benefits, and always eat smaller amounts so as not gain unnecessary amounts of weight. Even still, sneaking a couple of “bad” bars once in a while has never killed anyone.

5. Adjust Sleeping Time

Nothing feels quite as nice as a good, long, refreshing sleep – and while many of us understand that there is a biological need to get some rest, too often we try to burn the candle as much as possible while we are awake and don’t give ourselves enough time to rebuild. And while we see the effects of not enough sleep all around us (loss of fine motor skills, degradation in decision making, and a host of other problems), the fact of the matter is that our modern world has become so go-go and demanding that we feel powerless to change. This lack of sleep is not only hurting us in the short term, but also playing a major role in how long we can expect to be on this planet in the long term.

The jury may still be out on why exactly humans need sleep to function properly, but the evidence is all around us.

We are born with a system that demands we get some sleep – any sleep – after a set amount of time. Sure, we can push back the clock just as hard as we want, but the consequences of doing so are serious. What may start as a lack of concentration and a slow degradation of decision making can quickly devolve into full blown hallucinations and the body going into “sleep mode” all on its own – and depending on what you were doing when the mind and body have called time out you could be putting yourself and others in serious danger.

For years now, doctors and scientists around the world have been looking into the reasons that humans need sleep, but so far, the well has proven to be dry. We understand that we do need it, but much like the secrets of gravity, this answer lies just beyond our grasp. Regardless, the evidence is there and we need to fully embrace the fact that sleep is a mandatory part of keeping our bodies and minds in the best condition possible.

For too long people have focused purely on the amount of hours we sleep (typically touting eight as the perfect number) while ignoring the quality of those sleeping hours.

While people are quick to shout out that eight hours of sleep is all a person needs to get every single night, this number is dangerous on a couple of different levels. One, a rule of thumb across the broad spectrum of people for anything is irresponsible – there are just too many variables that come into play to say that this is the best number we could come up with. Secondly, it doesn’t take into account the main reasons for sleep – repair and recuperation, which could be very little for someone who leads a mostly sedentary life to very demanding for a person that is constantly active. You also need to figure in the quality of the sleep you are getting – eight hours of restless stop and go sleep is much

different than six hours of uninterrupted peaceful rest on a top-of-the-line mattress.

Be smart about your sleep decisions; make sure you are getting all of the sleep you personally need, and always invest in the best sleeping solutions to boost your long-term health prospects.

6. Get More Friends

While it may seem like a high school thing, having more friends (and social experiences) has been proven to have a dramatic effect on the quality of life that people are able to enjoy. Studies have shown that people who pull back or isolate themselves from society end up passing on a lot sooner than others, are much more susceptible to disease, and have higher instances of depression. And while getting more friends and boosting your social circle may not inoculate you from these problems, being around a group of people you enjoy and can engage with will give you a massive upgrade on your overall health.

When you isolate yourself from the people around you, you are not only closing yourself off socially but are also crippling yourself mentally.

While the social aspect of going out with friends and getting in enough physical activity is a big component to growing and nurturing a tight social circle, some of the biggest health benefits come in the mental arena – interacting with a diverse group of people can stretch your boundaries and offer new perspectives that you wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to. This not only challenges you to grow as a person and as a friend, but also has a way to keeping your mind sharp. While it needs exercise through different methods than a muscle, the brain still needs to be challenged to grow or it will atrophy – just look at the instances of people who retire. Those that continue to work and socialize in some capacity have been shown to have better motor skills, lead more active and engaging lifestyles, and even live longer than those that retire to a life of TV and relaxation. Thought the science is still catching up with the exact reason for why this is so, there is enough evidence to point to the fact that this is a growing and serious problem that needs to be addressed.

One of the best ways to go out and get more friends is to throw yourself into it wholeheartedly.

Friendships, like any other relationship you will engage in throughout your life, are things that just don’t crop up out of nowhere. You need to constantly be exposing yourself to different groups of people, seeing who you mesh with, and then spending time together and really trying to establish something. While socializing in general has the power to keep you sharper than doing nothing, the intense focus and shared bond of a real and sincere friendship has the power to transform your life.

If it’s been a while since you’ve looked into establishing new friendships, the best way to do so is to throw yourself into the process wholeheartedly. Don’t just look for two or three specific opportunities to make new friends – treat every single social encounter as an opportunity to at least lay the foundation for a real friendship. And though it may feel a little bit odd at first, understand that you are going down a path that will not only boost your health and happiness in the long haul, but also allow you to share with another human being.

7. Exercise More Often

It’s no secret that as a people we are becoming more and more unhealthy – it’s impossible not to look around your surroundings and see instances of people that are very overweight, sometimes dangerously so. [kind of judgmental and subjective for such an objective article – might consider removing altogether and speak about how we’ve become more sedentary instead.] And in some of those cases, we may just fit that bill.

Though much of it has to do with our eating habits and diet routines, the fact of the matter is that our modern world helps us to stay overweight more than it helps us lose the pounds. Sure, there are tools and techniques on the market to help us get more fit, but modern technology has allowed just about all of us to enjoy a sedentary life that wasn’t possible in the past – we can do almost everything from a computer, have few reasons to get outside and enjoy strenuous activity, and with all of the programming on TV and video games, the problem doesn’t seem to be going away. But something needs to be done, especially when you consider the fact that we are fast becoming the heaviest nation in the world.

One of the two major components to a long and health life, exercise is the backbone of really living.

A reliable and consistent exercise plan has the power to totally and completely change our lives for the better –all we need to do is find a program and stick to it. While diet also plays a major role, exercise gives us the leverage to transform our bodies and minds at the same time. Getting healthy often starts with a combination of the two, but if you are concerned about getting into shape right now, exercise can be done with zero tools or components to buy – all you need is yourself and some spare time.

While there are some routines and methods that have been proven to be more effective at losing weight or gaining muscle, the fact of the matter is that any sort of exercise – even just recreationally playing a game or walking around the block – can have an impact on your health.

Science and research has given us amazing insight into what makes the body change and adapt, and has allowed us to fine-tune an exercise program to drop weight or pack on muscle – or both! But for many of us, the goal is to not just look like a celebrity or model, but to feel better and to be healthier. When this is your goal just about any program will do, even if it’s no program at all. Walking is becoming popular again, especially in urban areas, but any kind of recreational act that you do on a regular basis will give you some sort of boost in the health department. The important thing here is to focus on something that you will stick to, something you will enjoy and continue throughout your life. Exercise is the key to living longer, and something we cannot afford to ignore any more.

8. You Just Need to Relax

Our modern world is more pressure-packed and activity-filled than ever – the demands on our time and energy are seemingly endless, and we continue to take withdrawals out of our energy bank that we can’t cash. This go-go attitude and lifestyle usually earns us a spectacular flame out ending in a crash and burn experience, and though we see all the time evidence for this serious problem we are almost powerless to stop ourselves from going down the same road.

The saddest part of this whole problem is that we ourselves have created this problem, but we have the perfect solution. While some of the external pressures we feel are very real and have serious consequences, much of it is created internally when we play our own story on top of the perceptions that we are having about a given time. The pressures may or may not be real, but to us we may as well have a piano set down on our chest.

More than ever we need to learn to relax, to breathe, to decompress – but also to protect ourselves from this happening in the first place.

Stress has been shown time and time again to be a literal killer – slow things down to make sure you don’t burst from the pressures of our modern world.

There is an adage in the Special Forces military community that says slow is smooth, smooth is fast – and there may be no one alive that is forced to deal with very real pressure more than a Special Forces operator on a mission. What this basically means is that though we think speed is everything, it often causes more harm than good. Sure, we could fly through something and end up with a somewhat passable product, but if we had just taken a bit of time to slow down and breathe, we would be able to produce something considerably better.

Stress on our minds equates to problems all over the body, and when we feel the pressure of the world pushing in on us, our brains are powerful enough to manifest it physically – we get headaches, we feel sick, we become weak or fall to an illness. The brain has the power to dictate anything it perceives as real, and we need to remain vigilant in making sure that we don’t feed a monster that doesn’t exist.

Though there are a million and one different options out there for relaxation, but the best solutions are free and totally natural.

There are a lot of drugs and medicines out there that promise to relax us effectively – but what often happens is that we become total vegetables and lose all of the qualities that make us human. And that’s without talking about the incredibly dangerous side effects that we have to contend with.

It’s important that we are able to disconnect from the pressures of the world when we start to feel them mounting, and to really assess whether they are actual problems or something that we have created all on our own. Whenever you start to feel the walls closing in, stand up, take a couple of deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth, and decide whether or not you are dealing with real or perceived pressures. Use this simple exercise and you’ll quickly be able to master any stressful situation, leading to a healthier life.

SEE ALSO: 15 Most Important Reasons Why You Should Eat Breakfast Everyday

9. Get a Pet

According to recent studies, even though the economy has seen better times and people are struggling to make ends meet, more and more people are turning to four-legged (and sometimes furry and feathered) friends to help them get through the rocky times. Often lifelong companions, the decision to get a pet should not solely be made just to make you feel better and to boost your health prospects (though they have the power to do so) – this is a serious commitment to take responsibility for another life, and doing so recklessly is dangerous and irresponsible.

While a dog may be a man’s best friend, the fact of the matter is that bringing just about any pet into your home can dramatically boost your life expectancy.

The change in a person’s entire outlook, perception, and overall attitude is dramatic when they decide to bring a pet into their lives. Often as close to having a child as you can get without actually having one, you will be in complete and total charge of another life – one that will only be able to communicate with your non-verbally. There is an entire learning curve to taking care of and raising an animal, but it can be one of the most rewarding experiences a person can have – often they become not just a pet, but a family member.

The most interesting thing about the health boost that comes with being a pet owner is that you don’t have to buy a traditional pet to get the boost – while dogs and cats are the most common animals to bring into your home, if you have an attachment to fish, birds, reptiles – even goats and spiders – you will be able to see a dramatic change in your well-being. The important thing to focus on is your level of connection and how attached you are to the life you are bringing into your home, not so much as the animal that it is.

There are other bonuses to getting a pet – not only will you see your health boost because of a sense of responsibility, but you’ll also be able to enjoy real compassion and a sense of belonging with your new animal.

Aside from the health boosts that come with the mental shifts necessary for being a responsible pet owner, you will also get some from the feelings of compassion and love that you get on a daily basis from your animal. There is a special bond that is created between a person and their pets, something that is indescribable in words but an emotion that we all have felt deep down at one point or another.

There is something about the look in our animal’s eyes that creates a sense of trust, belonging, and love that cannot be duplicated – and since we have to focus so much on their body language to determine what they are looking for at a specific moment, we learn to communicate on a whole new level.

10. Be More Optimistic

The odds are great that you know a handful of people that are optimistic about just about anything – true glass half full people that just don’t seem to be capable of having a bad day. Perhaps you are one of these people that seem to have sunshine always shining on their backs, a spring in their step and the quiet confidence necessary to get things done regardless of what is happening around them.

These people, these optimists, are often the most successful people we know – constantly tackling jobs that no one else will and finding themselves rewarded for it, always knowing exactly what to say and when, seemingly oblivious to the mountains of pressures and problems that are surrounding them and somehow always coming out on top – there is a real reason for this power, and a secret behind why so many of our elders are the most positive people you could meet.

The human mind is an incredibly powerful thing, a piece of us that we can barely understand – it controls everything about our lives, and what we think about most we often manifest. Positive thinking is the best way to ensure that you plow through any situation with the kind of force and attitude necessary for success.

Perhaps the most powerful thing in the known universe, the human mind is capable of miracles. Perhaps not miracles in the areas of levitation or telepathy, but our brains control everything about our lives. Reality for the most part is not truth, but perception – and while you or I may both be dealing with the same events, we will both see two entirely different “truths” about the situation. The most glaring example of this is in the case of sports – two teams and fan bases will watch a single game where there is a loser and a winner. Those that root for the winner will see that event as a great thing of happiness and an overwhelming success, while those that supported the loser will only see sadness and frustration. The outcome and the truth is exactly the same for both groups, but the outcome and perception is different and effects how we feel at any given moment.

There is a different between being optimistic and being naïve – a fine balance that needs to be walked, but you should always err on the side of positive thinking regardless of the situation.

To boost your long-term health and happiness, you must train yourself to look for the best part of any situation, and though it may not seem true at first, there is almost always a silver lining. Strive to find the good in things without being blind to the bad, and make every day exactly what you want. With just a bit of practice and application of this new mindset, you will see the world as never before, and will find dramatic changes in your life just seeming to happen all on their own. There is tremendous power in perception and your mind, if only you’d unlock it.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to live long life. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.