centenarians (people who live to 100) lived simple lives, following farm-to-table diets, frequently interacting with their communities and exercising by biking or walking long distances to work each day.
There is also one thing that is important: the seem to all live a stress free life.
If you notice, many centenarians and super centenarians (people who live to 110 and above), tell it like it is, don’t worry about much and take everything in stride.
As a matter of fact, the University of California-San Francisco research team found that the mere anticipation of stress can increase an individual’s risk of age-related disorders. In the study, 50 women (half of whom were caretakers for a patient with dementia, and therefore presumably deal with daily stress) were told that they would have to engage in public speaking or math problems.
The study found that those who felt most threatened by the anticipation of the stressful event exhibited greater signs of aging on the cellular level. The researchers proposed in a university release that greater anticipated threat levels in daily life may promote cellular aging in chronically stressed persons. There’s still research that needs to be done (“The science is a little grey here,” says Diller), but already it is beginning to pinpoint some ways that stress affects the aging process.
So what does this tell us? Eat clean, keep moving and active, and live a stress-free life.