The keys to a long life are pretty easy to guess. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink too much. Exercise regularly. And so on.
A new study in PLOS Medicine took a different approach to figuring out the fountain of youth and narrowed the list down to six categories. A few are a bit surprising.
The first no-nos are rather obvious (excessive smoking and drinking, poor diet, lack of exercise), but then the researchers looked at how long people slept and how often they sat. And, in their group of adults ages 45 years and old, they found that people who slept too much and sat for longer were at a higher risk of dying young.
“Both (sleep and sedentary behavior) are closely linked to our overall lifestyle, are likely to interact with other lifestyle behaviors, and together they represent the majority of our daily life,” researcher Ding Ding told Time.
