There's nothing you can do right now that will have a greater immediate effect on your life expectancy than exercise and calorie restriction. The best thing you can do for future improvement is to help researchers raise funds to develop repair technologies for human aging. But no-one wants to hear that. Everyone wants a silver bullet now, and it doesn't exist: "Friends occasionally ask me how they might best live healthy, longer. They inquire because I went to medical school, work in biotech, and focus professionally on developing drugs to treat diseases of aging by targeting aging genes. My response seems to surprise them, because it does not center on pharmaceutical products. The current answer on how to increase healthy human lifespan is simple: 'Eat less, and exercise more.' ... Modern medicine has discovered an impressive number of lifesaving new drugs for devastating diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and infectious diseases. Nevertheless, for most of us, active lifestyles and less food will have a more profound effect than taking more medicines. Hard as it is, we should walk, run, and bike more, and reduce our food intake. The best way we can increase our chances to live healthy, longer is simple: eat less and exercise more."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/07/05/a_simple_hard_answer_to_long_life/

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