Oxford and Harvard found the same longevity habits add a decade of healthy life. Here's what they are

 I'm pretty good at all of these. They seem to be missing the social connections which is in all previous longevity research I've seen.

Oxford and Harvard found the same longevity habits add a decade of healthy life. Here's what they are

Most people assume their lifespan is mostly written in their DNA. Two of the largest studies ever conducted on aging say otherwise, and the numbers they’ve produced are striking enough to change how you think about the next decade.

A 10-year gap in healthy, disease-free living separates people who practice a handful of daily habits from those who don’t. That gap isn’t estimated. It’s been measured across hundreds of thousands of people, and the habits responsible are more accessible than most people expect.

Why Your 50s Are the Highest-Leverage Decade for Longevity

Biological aging doesn’t accelerate evenly across a lifetime. The 50s are when chronic disease risk climbs fastest, when the gap between biological and chronological age starts to widen, and when the habits you keep have the most runway left to compound.

Frank Hu, MD, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has led much of the landmark Harvard longevity research, has consistently framed midlife as the window where behavior change still pays off most.

The Harvard data show that obesity combined with heavy smoking produces the lowest disease-free life expectancy at 50. Changing either of those factors measurably shifts the outcome.

What Two Major Studies Found About Aging and Daily Habits

A February 2025 Oxford University study published in Nature Medicine analyzed 164 lifestyle and environmental factors across nearly 500,000 UK Biobank participants and reached a conclusion that challenges a deeply held assumption: lifestyle and environment shape how we age and when we die prematurely more than our genetics do.

Related video: Study identifies three factors linked to delaying dementia (KYTX-TV Tyler-Longview)Smoking status and physical activity emerged as the two most powerful modifiable factors. Early-life exposures, including body weight at age 10 and maternal smoking, also showed measurable effects on aging outcomes decades later, which underscores just how long these influences stretch. But midlife habits remained the strongest lever any individual can actually pull.The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study put precise numbers on that leverage. Women at age 50 who practiced four or five healthy habits lived roughly 34 more years free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, compared to 24 disease-free years for women who practiced none. Men saw 31 versus 24. A 10-year difference in healthy life expectancy, driven entirely by daily behavior.

Which Habits Actually Move the Longevity Needle

Across both studies, the list of highest-impact habits is short:

• Not smoking, the single most harmful modifiable exposure in the Oxford analysis, with biological aging effects measurable long after exposure ends
• Regular physical activity, the second most powerful protective factor in the Oxford data
• A healthy weight, especially when paired with not smoking
• Diet quality, consistently linked to lower rates of hypertension, dementia and chronic disease
• Sleep, flagged by the Oxford UK Biobank analysis as a significant and often overlooked contributor to biological aging
• Moderate alcohol, part of Harvard’s original framework though guidance has shifted toward “less is better” in more recent updates

Stacking four or five of these habits matters more than perfecting any single one. Frank Hu’s team has consistently found that the compounding effect of multiple habits is where the 10-year gap comes from.

Why Variety of Exercise Is Its Own Longevity Factor

A January 2026 Harvard study in BMJ Medicine added a finding most people haven’t heard. Analyzing 111,000 participants over 30 years, researchers found that variety of exercise independently predicts mortality risk, even after controlling for total activity volume. Participants with the highest exercise variety had a 19% lower risk of premature death at every level of overall activity.

That means someone walking the same route every day isn’t getting the same protective effect as someone mixing walking, lifting, cycling and recreational sport. Variety isn’t a bonus feature of a good fitness routine. It’s a separate, measurable longevity signal.

The consistent message across all three studies: genetics set the floor, but daily behavior raises the ceiling. And for most people reading this, the decade when that ceiling moves most is already underway. If you’re also building the physical habits that protect your body as you age, research on bone density and daily habits after 50 is a natural next read.

This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.

Harvard Grid Accelerator Awards Funding to Five Research Projects to Drive Entrepreneurship

How do we get them to tackle more stroke rehab problems? 

With NO leadership and NO strategy, NOTHING EVER GETS SOLVED IN STROKE!

Harvard Grid Accelerator Awards Funding to Five Research Projects to Drive Entrepreneurship

The Science and Engineering Complex in Allston is the main building that houses Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. By Julian J. Giordano

By Edona Cosovic and Mert Geyiktepe, Crimson Staff Writers

12 hours ago

The Harvard Grid Accelerator awarded funding last month to five Harvard-led research projects aiming to bring innovative technologies to the market.

The five recipients are an artificial intelligence-assisted design project, a fast drug-resistance test, an emission-free refrigerant, a wearable to aid stroke rehab, and a gene discovery startup. The Harvard Grid was established in September 2022 as a joint project between the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard Office of Technology Development.

Paul N. Hayre, the accelerator’s executive director, said the Grid’s mission is to facilitate the commercialization of scientific and academic research in order “to reduce the activation energy to lift more ideas from lab to market.”

Hayre said he believes the Grid is different from other initiatives because it specializes in providing opportunities for “translating tough tech.”

“We’re not so much designed to help facilitate the Mark Zuckerberg kids in their dorm room who want to launch a software app,” he said. “There’s a lot of resources, and I think students have been finding their merry way to do that quite effectively. That’s not to say we wouldn't support someone who came knocking on the door of the Grid to support that.”

Assistant professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Jarad Mason — who leads the research project developing a new class of solid refrigerants to enable emission-free cooling — said the Grid Accelerator is an important source of funding for industry-oriented research.

“In the physical sciences and hard sciences, tough technology space, I would say, there historically have been much more limited opportunities for that kind of funding and the Harvard Grid Accelerator fills in that gap,” Mason said.

Juanjuan Zheng, a SEAS postdoctoral fellow leading research to create a system for fast drug-resistance testing, wrote in a statement that the Grid’s funding and expertise will be “instrumental” for the project’s next steps.

“In partnership with colleagues from Harvard’s teaching hospitals, we aim to utilize the support from the Grid to showcase our method across a wide range of real-world bacterial samples and anti-bacterial drugs,” Zheng wrote.

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Yunha Hwang, an Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Ph.D. candidate spearheading the project that analyzes genomes through language models, said the Grid provided an opportunity to combine research and industry techniques.

“Grid was a great opportunity for us to learn about how to build a business model using technology that is still developing,” she said.

The Grid Accelerator is a rebranded and extended version of the Physical Sciences and Engineering Accelerator, which was founded in 2013. Alan Gordon, the director of business development at OTD, has headed the accelerator since its founding.

“Previously, with the Physical Sciences Accelerator, we were typically funding about three projects a year,” Gordon said.

Gordon added that the Grid is intended to bolster research from across multiple schools and divisions within Harvard.

“It was important to us that the Grid is also a resource for entrepreneurial-minded faculty and students in the sciences throughout the University,” he said. “So in the accelerator, a couple of the projects that were funded are with faculty in FAS in the division of Science, not specifically in the School of Engineering.”

Hayre said in addition to providing annual awards, the Grid has a small fund to allocate to promising research projects outside of the regular grant timeline.

“Research doesn’t work on an annual schedule where once a year, you wake up and all of a sudden you’re ready to submit,” Hayre said.

“My goal certainly is to find partners and donors that would say, ‘This is important to SEAS, it’s important to Harvard, it’s something that is showing impact, and we’d like to support it,’” he added.

—Staff writer Edona Cosovic can be reached at edona.cosovic@thecrimson.co

7 things you can do to prevent a stroke per Harvard Health

Generic stuff once again.

Hell, my suggestions lead to a  307% reduction in stroke risk.  Don't listen to me, I'm not medically trained.
Like maybe a 307%  stroke risk reduction from these 11 possibilities? 

But these are my ideas, not to be thought of as medical advice. Does your doctor know of them and the research behind them? Or is incompetence in view?

7 things you can do to prevent a stroke per Harvard Health

What can you do to prevent stroke? Age makes us more susceptible to having a stroke, as does having a mother, father, or other close relative who has had a stroke.
You can't reverse the years or change your family history, but there are many other stroke risk factors that you can control—provided that you're aware of them. "Knowledge is power," says Dr. Natalia Rost, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Acute Stroke Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. "If you know that a particular risk factor is sabotaging your health and predisposing you to a higher risk of stroke, you can take steps to alleviate the effects of that risk."

How to prevent stroke

Here are seven ways to start reining in your risks today to avoid stroke, before a stroke has the chance to strike.

1. Lower blood pressure

High blood pressure is a huge factor, doubling or even quadrupling your stroke risk if it is not controlled. "High blood pressure is the biggest contributor to the risk of stroke in both men and women," Dr. Rost says. "Monitoring blood pressure and, if it is elevated, treating it, is probably the biggest difference people can make to their vascular health."
Your ideal goal: Maintain a blood pressure of less than 135/85. But for some, a less aggressive goal (such as 140/90) may be more appropriate.
How to achieve it:

• Reduce the salt in your diet to no more than 1,500 milligrams a day (about a half teaspoon).
• Avoid high-cholesterol foods, such as burgers, cheese, and ice cream.
• Eat 4 to 5 cups of fruits and vegetables every day, one serving of fish two to three times a week, and several daily servings of whole grains and low-fat dairy.
• Get more exercise — at least 30 minutes of activity a day, and more, if possible.
• Quit smoking, if you smoke.

If needed, take blood pressure medicines.

2. Lose weight

Obesity, as well as the complications linked to it (including high blood pressure and diabetes), raises your odds of having a stroke. If you're overweight, losing as little as 10 pounds can have a real impact on your stroke risk.
Your goal: While an ideal body mass index (BMI) is 25 or less, that may not be realistic for you. Work with your doctor to create a personal weight loss strategy.
How to achieve it:

• Try to eat no more than 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day (depending on your activity level and your current BMI).
• Increase the amount of exercise you do with activities like walking, golfing, or playing tennis, and by making activity part of every single day.

3. Exercise more

Exercise contributes to losing weight and lowering blood pressure, but it also stands on its own as an independent stroke reducer.
Your goal: Exercise at a moderate intensity at least five days a week.
How to achieve it:

• Take a walk around your neighborhood every morning after breakfast.
• Start a fitness club with friends.
• When you exercise, reach the level at which you're breathing hard, but you can still talk.
• Take the stairs instead of an elevator when you can.
• If you don't have 30 consecutive minutes to exercise, break it up into 10- to 15-minute sessions a few times each day.

4. If you drink — do it in moderation

Drinking a little alcohol may decrease your risk of stroke. "Studies show that if you have about one drink per day, your risk may be lower," says to Dr. Rost. "Once you start drinking more than two drinks per day, your risk goes up very sharply."
Your goal: Don't drink alcohol or do it in moderation.
How to achieve it:

• Have no more than one glass of alcohol a day.
• Make red wine your first choice, because it contains resveratrol, which is thought to protect the heart and brain.
• Watch your portion sizes. A standard-sized drink is a 5-ounce glass of wine, 12-ounce beer, or 1.5-ounce glass of hard liquor.

5. Treat atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is a form of irregular heartbeat that causes clots to form in the heart. Those clots can then travel to the brain, producing a stroke. "Atrial fibrillation carries almost a fivefold risk of stroke, and should be taken seriously," Dr. Rost says.
Your goal: If you have atrial fibrillation, get it treated.
How to achieve it:

• If you have symptoms such as heart palpitations or shortness of breath, see your doctor for an exam.
• You may need to take an anticoagulant drug (blood thinner) such as warfarin (Coumadin) or one of the newer direct-acting anticoagulant drugs to reduce your stroke risk from atrial fibrillation. Your doctors can guide you through this treatment.

6. Treat diabetes

Having high blood sugar damages blood vessels over time, making clots more likely to form inside them.
Your goal: Keep your blood sugar under control.
How to achieve it:

• Monitor your blood sugar as directed by your doctor.
• Use diet, exercise, and medicines to keep your blood sugar within the recommended range.

7. Quit smoking

Smoking accelerates clot formation in a couple of different ways. It thickens your blood, and it increases the amount of plaque buildup in the arteries. "Along with a healthy diet and regular exercise, smoking cessation is one of the most powerful lifestyle changes that will help you reduce your stroke risk significantly," Dr. Rost says.
Your goal: Quit smoking.
How to achieve it:

• Ask your doctor for advice on the most appropriate way for you to quit.
• Use quit-smoking aids, such as nicotine pills or patches, counseling, or medicine.
• Don't give up. Most smokers need several tries to quit. See each attempt as bringing you one step closer to successfully beating the habit.

7 things you can do to prevent a stroke - from Harvard Women's Health

Hell, my suggestions lead to a  307% reduction in stroke risk.  Don't listen to me, I'm not medically trained.
Like maybe a 307%  stroke risk reduction from these 11 possibilities? 

But these are my ideas, not to be thought of as medical advice. Does your doctor know of them and the research behind them? Or is incompetence in view?

7 things you can do to prevent a stroke - from Harvard women's health

What can you do to prevent stroke? Age makes us more susceptible to having a stroke, as does having a mother, father, or other close relative who has had a stroke.
You can't reverse the years or change your family history, but there are many other stroke risk factors that you can control—provided that you're aware of them. "Knowledge is power," says Dr. Natalia Rost, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Acute Stroke Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. "If you know that a particular risk factor is sabotaging your health and predisposing you to a higher risk of stroke, you can take steps to alleviate the effects of that risk."

How to prevent stroke

Here are seven ways to start reining in your risks today to avoid stroke, before a stroke has the chance to strike.

1. Lower blood pressure

High blood pressure is a huge factor, doubling or even quadrupling your stroke risk if it is not controlled. "High blood pressure is the biggest contributor to the risk of stroke in both men and women," Dr. Rost says. "Monitoring blood pressure and, if it is elevated, treating it, is probably the biggest difference people can make to their vascular health."
Your ideal goal: Maintain a blood pressure of less than 135/85. But for some, a less aggressive goal (such as 140/90) may be more appropriate.
How to achieve it:

• Reduce the salt in your diet to no more than 1,500 milligrams a day (about a half teaspoon).
• Avoid high-cholesterol foods, such as burgers, cheese, and ice cream.
• Eat 4 to 5 cups of fruits and vegetables every day, one serving of fish two to three times a week, and several daily servings of whole grains and low-fat dairy.
• Get more exercise — at least 30 minutes of activity a day, and more, if possible.
• Quit smoking, if you smoke.

If needed, take blood pressure medicines.

2. Lose weight

Obesity, as well as the complications linked to it (including high blood pressure and diabetes), raises your odds of having a stroke. If you're overweight, losing as little as 10 pounds can have a real impact on your stroke risk.
Your goal: While an ideal body mass index (BMI) is 25 or less, that may not be realistic for you. Work with your doctor to create a personal weight loss strategy.
How to achieve it:

• Try to eat no more than 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day (depending on your activity level and your current BMI).
• Increase the amount of exercise you do with activities like walking, golfing, or playing tennis, and by making activity part of every single day.

3. Exercise more

Exercise contributes to losing weight and lowering blood pressure, but it also stands on its own as an independent stroke reducer.
Your goal: Exercise at a moderate intensity at least five days a week.
How to achieve it:

• Take a walk around your neighborhood every morning after breakfast.
• Start a fitness club with friends.
• When you exercise, reach the level at which you're breathing hard, but you can still talk.
• Take the stairs instead of an elevator when you can.
• If you don't have 30 consecutive minutes to exercise, break it up into 10- to 15-minute sessions a few times each day.

4. If you drink — do it in moderation

Drinking a little alcohol may decrease your risk of stroke. "Studies show that if you have about one drink per day, your risk may be lower," says to Dr. Rost. "Once you start drinking more than two drinks per day, your risk goes up very sharply."
Your goal: Don't drink alcohol or do it in moderation.
How to achieve it:

• Have no more than one glass of alcohol a day.
• Make red wine your first choice, because it contains resveratrol, which is thought to protect the heart and brain.
• Watch your portion sizes. A standard-sized drink is a 5-ounce glass of wine, 12-ounce beer, or 1.5-ounce glass of hard liquor.

5. Treat atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is a form of irregular heartbeat that causes clots to form in the heart. Those clots can then travel to the brain, producing a stroke. "Atrial fibrillation carries almost a fivefold risk of stroke, and should be taken seriously," Dr. Rost says.
Your goal: If you have atrial fibrillation, get it treated.
How to achieve it:

• If you have symptoms such as heart palpitations or shortness of breath, see your doctor for an exam.
• You may need to take an anticoagulant drug (blood thinner) such as warfarin (Coumadin) or one of the newer direct-acting anticoagulant drugs to reduce your stroke risk from atrial fibrillation. Your doctors can guide you through this treatment.

6. Treat diabetes

Having high blood sugar damages blood vessels over time, making clots more likely to form inside them.
Your goal: Keep your blood sugar under control.
How to achieve it:

• Monitor your blood sugar as directed by your doctor.
• Use diet, exercise, and medicines to keep your blood sugar within the recommended range.

7. Quit smoking

Smoking accelerates clot formation in a couple of different ways. It thickens your blood, and it increases the amount of plaque buildup in the arteries. "Along with a healthy diet and regular exercise, smoking cessation is one of the most powerful lifestyle changes that will help you reduce your stroke risk significantly," Dr. Rost says.
Your goal: Quit smoking.
How to achieve it:

• Ask your doctor for advice on the most appropriate way for you to quit.
• Use quit-smoking aids, such as nicotine pills or patches, counseling, or medicine.
• Don't give up. Most smokers need several tries to quit. See each attempt as bringing you one step closer to successfully beating the habit.

Identify a stroke F-A-S-T

Too many people ignore the signs of stroke because they question whether their symptoms are real. "My recommendation is, don't wait if you have any unusual symptoms," Dr. Rost advises. Listen to your body and trust your instincts. If something is off, get professional help right away."
The National Stroke Association has created an easy acronym to help you remember, and act on, the signs of a stroke. Cut out this image and post it on your refrigerator for easy reference.

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier

So your doctor needs to get you 100% recovered immediately before you lose the first two groups of friends that Aristotle describes.  DEMAND results or your doctor will use the craptastic saying; 'All strokes are different, all stroke recoveries are different'. You can't allow your doctor to hide and cower behind that useless saying. At age 50 I had my stroke, it wasn't until 56 I moved to Michigan, got divorced. That was the point where Life became Great. Having the time of my life right now. 

Aristotle believes that there are three different kinds of friendship; that of utility, friendship of pleasure, and virtuous friendship. 

and that you will likely lose all of the first two post stroke?

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier

Second in an occasional series on how Harvard researchers are tackling the problematic issues of aging.
When scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives.
They got more than they wanted.
After following the surviving Crimson men for nearly 80 years as part of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, researchers have collected a cornucopia of data on their physical and mental health.
Of the original Harvard cohort recruited as part of the Grant Study, only 19 are still alive, all in their mid-90s. Among the original recruits were eventual President John F. Kennedy and longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. (Women weren’t in the original study because the College was still all male.)
In addition, scientists eventually expanded their research to include the men’s offspring, who now number 1,300 and are in their 50s and 60s, to find out how early-life experiences affect health and aging over time. Some participants went on to become successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, and others ended up as schizophrenics or alcoholics, but not on inevitable tracks.
During the intervening decades, the control groups have expanded. In the 1970s, 456 Boston inner-city residents were enlisted as part of the Glueck Study, and 40 of them are still alive. More than a decade ago, researchers began including wives in the Grant and Glueck studies.
Over the years, researchers have studied the participants’ health trajectories and their broader lives, including their triumphs and failures in careers and marriage, and the finding have produced startling lessons, and not only for the researchers.
“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”

"The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80,” said Robert Waldinger with his wife Jennifer Stone.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.
The long-term research has received funding from private foundations, but has been financed largely by grants from the National Institutes of Health, first through the National Institute of Mental Health, and more recently through the National Institute on Aging.
Researchers who have pored through data, including vast medical records and hundreds of in-person interviews and questionnaires, found a strong correlation between men’s flourishing lives and their relationships with family, friends, and community. Several studies found that people’s level of satisfaction with their relationships at age 50 was a better predictor of physical health than their cholesterol levels were.
“When we gathered together everything we knew about them about at age 50, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old,” said Waldinger in a popular TED Talk. “It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”

TED talk / Robert Waldinger

He recorded his TED talk, titled “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,” in 2015, and it has been viewed 13,000,000 times.
The researchers also found that marital satisfaction has a protective effect on people’s mental health. Part of a study found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s reported that their moods didn’t suffer even on the days when they had more physical pain. Those who had unhappy marriages felt both more emotional and physical pain.
Those who kept warm relationships got to live longer and happier, said Waldinger, and the loners often died earlier. “Loneliness kills,” he said. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
According to the study, those who lived longer and enjoyed sound health avoided smoking and alcohol in excess. Researchers also found that those with strong social support experienced less mental deterioration as they aged.
In part of a recent study, researchers found that women who felt securely attached to their partners were less depressed and more happy in their relationships two-and-a-half years later, and also had better memory functions than those with frequent marital conflicts.

“Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”

— Robert Waldinger

“Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains,” said Waldinger in his TED talk. “And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn’t take a toll on their memories.”
Since aging starts at birth, people should start taking care of themselves at every stage of life, the researchers say.
“Aging is a continuous process,” Waldinger said. “You can see how people can start to differ in their health trajectory in their 30s, so that by taking good care of yourself early in life you can set yourself on a better course for aging. The best advice I can give is ‘Take care of your body as though you were going to need it for 100 years,’ because you might.”
The study, like its remaining original subjects, has had a long life, spanning four directors, whose tenures reflected their medical interests and views of the time.
Under the first director, Clark Heath, who stayed from 1938 until 1954, the study mirrored the era’s dominant view of genetics and biological determinism. Early researchers believed that physical constitution, intellectual ability, and personality traits determined adult development. They made detailed anthropometric measurements of skulls, brow bridges, and moles, wrote in-depth notes on the functioning of major organs, examined brain activity through electroencephalograms, and even analyzed the men’s handwriting.
Now, researchers draw men’s blood for DNA testing and put them into MRI scanners to examine organs and tissues in their bodies, procedures that would have sounded like science fiction back in 1938. In that sense, the study itself represents a history of the changes that life brings.
Psychiatrist George Vaillant, who joined the team as a researcher in 1966, led the study from 1972 until 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Vaillant emphasized the role of relationships, and came to recognize the crucial role they played in people living long and pleasant lives.

“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”

— George Vaillant

In a book called “Aging Well,” Vaillant wrote that six factors predicted healthy aging for the Harvard men: physical activity, absence of alcohol abuse and smoking, having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs, and enjoying both a healthy weight and a stable marriage. For the inner-city men, education was an additional factor. “The more education the inner city men obtained,” wrote Vaillant, “the more likely they were to stop smoking, eat sensibly, and use alcohol in moderation.”
Vaillant’s research highlighted the role of these protective factors in healthy aging. The more factors the subjects had in place, the better the odds they had for longer, happier lives.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment,” said Vaillant. “But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”
The study showed that the role of genetics and long-lived ancestors proved less important to longevity than the level of satisfaction with relationships in midlife, now recognized as a good predictor of healthy aging. The research also debunked the idea that people’s personalities “set like plaster” by age 30 and cannot be changed.
“Those who were clearly train wrecks when they were in their 20s or 25s turned out to be wonderful octogenarians,” he said. “On the other hand, alcoholism and major depression could take people who started life as stars and leave them at the end of their lives as train wrecks.”

Professor Robert Waldinger is director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life. Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

The study’s fourth director, Waldinger has expanded research to the wives and children of the original men. That is the second-generation study, and Waldinger hopes to expand it into the third and fourth generations. “It will probably never be replicated,” he said of the lengthy research, adding that there is yet more to learn.
“We’re trying to see how people manage stress, whether their bodies are in a sort of chronic ‘fight or flight’ mode,” Waldinger said. “We want to find out how it is that a difficult childhood reaches across decades to break down the body in middle age and later.”
Lara Tang ’18, a human and evolutionary biology concentrator who recently joined the team as a research assistant, relishes the opportunity to help find some of those answers. She joined the effort after coming across Waldinger’s TED talk in one of her classes.
“That motivated me to do more research on adult development,” said Tang. “I want to see how childhood experiences affect developments of physical health, mental health, and happiness later in life.”
Asked what lessons he has learned from the study, Waldinger, who is a Zen priest, said he practices meditation daily and invests time and energy in his relationships, more than before.
“It’s easy to get isolated, to get caught up in work and not remembering, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen these friends in a long time,’ ” Waldinger said. “So I try to pay more attention to my relationships than I used to.”

Activity trackers: Can they really help you get fit?

I know mine helps me. If I'm short by 10pm I'll go out and get to 10,000 steps. With only eating two meals a day and this walking I've lost 20 lbs., still 15 to go.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/activity-trackers-help-you-get-fit-2017102312594

Does drinking diet soda raise the risk of a stroke?

Conundrum time, confuse your doctor with questions about this.

 

Does drinking diet soda raise the risk of a stroke?

Posted July 31, 2017, 10:30 am

Julie Corliss, Executive Editor, Harvard Heart Letter

For diet soda fans, recent news reports linking these popular drinks to higher risk of stroke may have been alarming. A closer look at the study behind the headlines suggests there’s no need to panic. But beverages naturally low in calories are probably a healthier option than artificially sweetened drinks.
The study included 2,888 people ages 45 and older from the long-running Framingham Heart Study, all of whom filled out diet questionnaires up to three times over a seven-year period. People who said they drank at least one artificially sweetened soda a day were about twice as likely to have a stroke over the following decade when compared to those who drank less than one a week. Drinking regular, sugar-sweetened sodas or beverages did not appear to raise stroke risk.
However, these types of studies can’t prove cause and effect, only an association. Also, only 97 people (3%) had strokes during the follow-up, which means only two or three of those strokes could possibly be attributed to drinking diet soda, says Dr. Kathryn Rexrode, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital who co-authored an earlier, larger study looking at soda consumption and stroke risk.

Stroke risk from all sodas?

That study detected a slightly higher risk of stroke in people who drank more than one soda per day, regardless of whether it contained sugar or an artificial sweetener. Although the latest study didn’t detect a higher stroke risk from sugary beverages, that certainly doesn’t suggest they are a better choice than diet sodas. Many studies have already shown that drinking sugary beverages on a regular basis can lead to weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke, she notes.

Possible explanations

In fact, one possible explanation why sugary beverages weren’t linked to stroke in the recent study might be a phenomenon known as survival bias. In this case, that would mean that people who drank a lot of sugar-sweetened beverages may have died earlier from other illnesses such as heart disease.
Conversely, diet beverages may have shown a link to stroke because of a different issue, called reverse causation. In an attempt to be healthier, people who are overweight or have diabetes may be more likely to choose diet drinks over sugary ones. Their heightened stroke risk may result from their health problems rather than their beverage choice. “We might just be measuring the residual impact of obesity and diabetes,” says Dr. Rexrode.

Artificial sweeteners: Other shortcomings

Another conundrum: researchers don’t have any plausible explanation for why artificial sweeteners might increase stroke risk. Still, there may be other reasons to ditch them.
If you use artificial sweeteners to control your weight, you should know that the support for that strategy is pretty shaky. Some evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners make people crave sugary, high-calorie foods, thereby negating the sweetener’s potential to cut your overall calorie intake. And some experts believe that people who use these high-intensity sweeteners (which are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar) may come to find naturally sweet foods, such as fruit, less appealing and less-sweet foods, such as vegetables, downright unpalatable. If so, those people might be missing out on the many heart-protecting nutrients found in fresh, natural foods.
But Dr. Rexrode isn’t a stickler when it comes to diet soda. “I encourage my patients to eliminate regular soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks to avoid empty calories,” she says. “But if someone says they can’t do without a Coke in the morning to wake up, I’ll encourage them to switch to coffee or diet Coke.” Water is an even better choice, however. “There are a lot of ways to make it more appealing, both visually and taste-wise.” she adds. Try flavoring flat or sparkling water with a splash of fruit juice, or add frozen fruit, cucumber, or crushed mint.

Why dietary supplements are suspect - Harvard Health Publications

Be careful out there, you have no clue what is in those supplements you take. And if our fuckingly stupid federal legislators hadn't passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA): (DSHEA) defined dietary supplements as a category of food, which put them under different regulations than drugs. They are considered safe until proven otherwise. Caveat Emptor.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-dietary-supplements-are-suspect?

Dietary supplements—including herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other products—are a $37-billion industry in the United States, and 60% of women are taking them regularly. At the same time, mounting research is suggesting that supplements—even mainstays like calcium—may be harmful at high doses.
The use of supplements and other alternatives to standard treatments is centuries old, but Dr. David Eisenberg, adjunct associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was the first to document the widespread use of alternative therapies in the United States. In a 1993 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Eisenberg and colleagues reported that more than a third of Americans were using unconventional therapies, largely for chronic conditions, and most were doing so without letting their clinicians know. That report covered acupuncture, spinal manipulation, massage, and yoga, but it also focused public attention on all unconventional treatments, including the growing use of herbal remedies and other dietary supplements. In 1998, the Office of Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was revamped as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and charged with funding rigorous studies into the safety and effectiveness of alternative physical treatments as well as popular dietary supplements and herbs.

The evidence for herbs

The traditional practice of herbal medicine involves combining different herbs and using them in a variety of preparations. Herbal remedies marketed today are usually powders or extracts derived from plant leaves, stems, or roots. Several studies, largely NIH-funded, have put some remedies often recommended for women to the test. The results are summarized below.
Black cohosh. A plant long used as a home remedy for arthritis, black cohosh has been recommended for hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, and other menopausal symptoms. Studies of its effectiveness have had mixed results. However, there are more than 50 reports of liver damage in people taking it, although it is unknown whether black cohosh or another substance in the preparation triggered the reactions.
Chamomile. This herb appears to be effective in relieving anxiety. Although less potent than prescription drugs, a cup of chamomile tea may soothe your nerves. Because chamomile is related to ragweed, marigolds, chrysanthemums, and daisies, it may trigger an allergic reaction if you have asthma or are allergic to these plants.
Echinacea. There is no conclusive evidence that echinacea either prevents colds or reduces cold symptoms. It may trigger reactions in people who are allergic to ragweed, marigolds, chrysanthemums, or daisies.
Ginseng. Although ginseng has been touted as a remedy for everything from colds to fatigue to forgetfulness, there isn't strong evidence from clinical trials that it has any of those properties. Ginseng may also interact with aspirin and the anti-clotting agent warfarin (Coumadin).
Ginkgo biloba. Extracts from the leaves of the ginkgo tree are promoted for improving memory and preventing and treating dementia. However, in the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory study of 3,000 men and women over age 75, ginkgo didn't slow cognitive decline or reduce the incidence of dementia over a six-year period. Ginkgo may also increase bleeding risk.
Milk thistle. Laboratory studies indicated that this herb, also known as silymarin, had a protective effect on liver cells, but clinical trials haven't validated any benefit. Don't count on milk thistle to compensate for the effects of a few extra glasses of wine.
St. John's wort. A few early studies indicated that St. John's wort might alleviate depression, but larger trials failed to confirm those results. St. John's wort also interacts with a large number of prescription medications.

What's up with supplements?

Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other compounds that are essential for good health have been marketed as supplements for decades. However, relatively few have been tested in clinical trials. Those that have been or are being subjected to scientific scrutiny include the following:
Calcium. Research has indicated that high doses of calcium from supplements don't have much of an effect on bone density and increase the risk of heart disease and kidney stones. If you aren't getting at least 500 to 700 milligrams (mg) of calcium in your daily diet, you may need a supplement, but it's a good idea to limit your supplement intake to 600 mg a day.
Glucosamine and chondroitin. These substances, both components of cartilage, are used to prevent arthritis and relieve joint pain. Clinical trials have shown that they have little effect.
Melatonin. A synthetic copy of a natural hormone, melatonin is used for jet lag, sleep disturbances, and insomnia. Research has determined that it can be effective at doses as low as 0.5 mg. If you're considering it, talk to your doctor about dosage and timing.
Vitamin D. Because most people who live in northern latitudes don't make enough vitamin D from sun exposure, a supplement may be necessary to fill the daily requirement of 800 international units (IUs). Whether higher, 2,000-IU doses reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, or cancer will be determined by the 25,000-person Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (the VITAL study), whose results will be announced in 2017.
Omega-3 fatty acids. Although studies have linked consuming foods high in omega-3s to a reduced risk of heart disease and inflammation, it's questionable whether omega-3 supplements—available primarily in fish oil capsules—have the same effect. The VITAL study will help to answer that question, too.
Supplements for other purposes. The shelves of supplement stores abound with products that promise to make exercise easier and promote weight loss. These, too, are unproven, and some may contain stimulants that are harmful when used for extended periods.

The bottom line

The value of most herbs and supplements has been discounted or remains unproven. Few are worth the money spent on them. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the pills, capsules, or tablets contain all—or even any—of the ingredients listed on the packaging.
Most important, taking supplements can be risky. A study published in October 2015 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the adverse effects of supplements were responsible for an average of 23,000 emergency department visits per year.
If you are concerned that your diet isn't providing all the nutrients you need, don't shop for supplements before talking to your doctor. If you truly need a vitamin or other dietary supplement, your clinician can suggest an appropriate product and dose. If you're currently talking a vitamin or other supplement, let your health care team know.

Serious issues with supplements

"Some non-vitamin supplements are marketed heavily in the absence of reliable evidence of efficacy or safety and may interact with prescription drugs. Moreover, some people may delay beginning proven therapies because they are relying on supplements. And some of these products are costly," says Dr. David Eisenberg, adjunct associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The supplements used in government-funded clinical studies are analyzed for purity and standardized for dose. Supplement manufacturers are required to perform such analyses and to supply the results to the FDA. Yet, according to a report aired in January 2016 by PBS's investigative series Frontline, few of the thousands of supplement manufacturers do so, and the FDA lacks the staff and resources to analyze supplements or to compel manufacturers to comply.
As a result, the contents of a supplement capsule may not be what's described on the label. Canadian researchers who analyzed a random sample of 44 products from 12 manufacturers reported in 2013 that 60% of the products contained substances not listed on the labels, some of which were potentially harmful contaminants. And a 2015 investigation by the New York attorney general determined that only 21% of random samples of popular house-brands supplements purchased from GNC, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart contained the ingredients in the concentrations listed on the labels. Some contained no trace of the advertised active ingredient, and others consisted primarily of "fillers," including wheat and soy, which may trigger allergic reactions in some people. Other investigations have uncovered supplements adulterated with steroid hormones. When it comes to dietary supplements, the ancient warning "buyer beware!" is more relevant than ever.

A Harvard neuroscientist told us the major ways meditation changes your brain

Amy has been beating on this for years, maybe this might be the tipping point.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/harvard-neuroscientist-sara-lazar-meditation-interview-2015-8
Mindfulness meditation is incredibly popular right now.

According to the National Institute of Health, 18 million people in the US have meditated, or 8% of the population.

Studies suggests that the practice lessens stresses, increases memory, and may even help prevent genetic damage related to cancer.

While there is an ever-increasing amount of academic research around the practice and its effects, scientists are still figuring out what precisely is happening when people meditate, and what effects that behaviour has on the brain.

Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar, a leading researcher in the field, is one of the first to show that meditation practice produces structural changes in the brain.

In 2005, her team was the first to show how long-term meditation practice correlates with cortical thickening in brain areas associated with attention, sensory processing, and interoception (the awareness someone has about the physiological state of their body).

In a 2011 paper, she found that people who learned meditation for the first time in an eight-week course had increases in grey matter concentration in areas of the brain associated with “learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.”

The research suggests that “changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing,” Lazar says.

Those changes to brain structure come with big changes in mental activity.

Lazar revealed a few of them to Tech Insider:

• Understanding yourself (and other people too). Meditation increases your awareness of “minimally conscious thoughts and emotions,” or quieter emotions that otherwise go unnoticed. “You have probably experienced many emotions that you’re not even aware of,” Lazar says. “If you understand them in yourself, you’ll understand them better in other people.”
• Emotional strength. When you have a higher resolution image of your emotional landscape, then you’re less to be swayed by each individual feeling. “If you have a better handle of all the different emotions, you realise, ‘OK, this emotion isn’t useful,'” Lazar says. “It gives you more information, and information is power.”
• Getting less freaked out by stress. “You’re less likely to make a rash decision,” Lazar says. “You’re less stressed, you’re less caught up in the hullabaloo around you. I think that’s important regardless of what you do. it plays into quality of life. I still get stressed, but it takes more to make me stressed out.”

Lazar is careful to note that your brain changes when you learn anything, be it a second language or juggling. Same with meditation: though it can be an intimidatingly abstract activity when you first encounter it, mindfulness meditation is an exercise that you can learn to get better at, just like swinging at a baseball.

It works like this.

“You pick one object,” Lazar says. “For many people, it’s breathing sensations. It doesn’t have to be that, but it’s the most common thing to start with. You notice that, and your mind is going to get bored, and it’s going to start wandering, and then you realise, oh, my mind is starting to wander, and bring it back to breath.”

Instead of manipulating a bat to hit a ball, Lazar says that you’re using two of the mind’s go-to instruments: attention and metacognition, or your awareness of your own thoughts.

“Attention helps you stay focused, and metacognition helps you to see all the minimally conscious content,” Lazar says. “You think, this is boring, but what else is happening? You start to notice little thoughts and feeling happening in the back. They’re happening all the time, and we miss them 80% or 90% of the time. You notice there’s a lot more going on that you never saw before.”

Lazar has had a personal practice for nearly two decades, but she fell into meditation unexpectedly. When she and a friend over-trained for the Boston Marathon and ended up hurting themselves, Lazar started going to yoga to help recover.

Then she got into mindfulness meditation. “It was really clear that something in my brain had changed,” she tells Tech Insider. “I was noticing things I hadn’t noticed before, and I was less reactive to things that would piss me off.”

Lazar is careful to note that meditation is not a cure-all, in the same way that while exercise is a terrifically excellent thing to do for yourself, it’s not the only thing you should be doing for your overall well-being.

“It’s not you start meditation and you become a Buddhist monk,” Lazar says. “It will help promote attention and metacognition. The benefits are real and beneficial, but it’s not like you become a super person because of this.”

Watch Lazar’s 2011 TedX talk on meditation’s effects on the brain below.

Harvard scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind method of creating a class of nanowires

With this our researchers could listen in on single neurons as they communicate with each other as neuroplasticity occurs with neighboring neurons taking on new tasks. With that knowledge we could finally make neuroplasticity repeatable. But this will only occur if we can put it into the strategy that the great stroke association is running. But this will fall by the wayside for another 50 years because we have craptastic stroke associations right now. And no strategy.

Harvard scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind method of creating a class of nanowires

Harvard scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind method of creating a class of nanowires that one day could have applications in areas ranging from consumer electronics to solar panels.
The technique, developed by Bobby Day and Max Mankin, graduate students working in the lab of Charles Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, takes advantage of two long-understood principles. One is Plateau-Rayleigh instability, an aspect of fluid dynamics that describes why a thin stream of water breaks up into smaller droplets. The other involves crystal growth. The technique is described in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
“This is really a fundamental discovery,” Day said. “We’re still in the early stages, but we think there is a lot of room for discovery, both of fundamental properties of these structures as well as applications.”
First described in 1870, Plateau-Rayleigh instability is normally associated with liquids, but researchers for years have recognized a similar phenomenon in nanowires. When heated to extreme temperatures, the wires transform from solid into a series of periodically spaced droplets.
To create the new type of wire, Day and Mankin heated traditionally grown nanowires to just below that transformation point in a vacuum chamber, then pumped in silicon atoms, which spontaneously crystallize on the wire.
Rather than form a uniform shell, the atoms grow into regularly spaced structures, similar to the droplets that appear when nanowires break down at high temperatures. Unlike with the droplets, though, the process can be tightly controlled.
“By varying the temperature and pressure, we can exert some control over the size and spacing of these structures,” Day said. “What we found was if we change the conditions, we can ‘tune’ how these structures are built.”
Along with duplicating the process in nanowires between 20 and 100 nanometers in diameter, researchers demonstrated the process using several combinations of materials, including silicon and germanium. In addition to being able to “tune” the distance between the lobes on nanowires, Mankin said tests showed they were also able to tune the cross-section of the wires.
“We can tune the cross-section to produce more rounded or square-type wires,” Mankin said. “We were also able to produce wires with a platelet-like shape.”
With those new structures, researchers found, came new properties for the wires. While Day and Mankin’s study focused on the wires’ ability to absorb different wavelengths of light, both said additional research is needed to explore other properties.
“This paper is just one example,” Day said. “There are many other properties — including thermal conductance, electrical conductance, and magnetic properties — that depend on the wires’ diameter, and they still need to be explored.”
Though it may take years to fully explore those additional properties, Day and Mankin said applications for the new wires could emerge in the near term.
“Structures at this scale, because they are sub-wavelength in size, absorb light very efficiently,” Day explained. “They act almost like optical antennas, and funnel the light into them. Previous research has shown that different diameter wires absorb different wavelengths of light. For example, very small diameters absorb blue light well, and larger diameters absorb green light. What we showed is if you have this modulation along the structure … we can have the best of both worlds and absorb both wavelengths on the same structure.”
The new wires’ unusual light-absorption abilities don’t end there, though.
By shrinking the space between the crystalline structures, Day and Mankin discovered that the wires not only absorb light at specific wavelengths, they also absorb light from other parts of the spectrum.
“It’s actually more than a simple additive effect,” Day said. “As you shrink the spacing down to distances smaller than about 400 nanometers, it creates what are called grating modes, and we see these huge absorption peaks in the infrared. What that means is that you could absorb the same amount of infrared light with these nanowires as you could with traditional silicon materials that are 100 times thicker.”
“This is a powerful discovery because previously, if you wanted to use nanowires for photo-detection of green and blue light, you’d need two wires,” Mankin said. “Now we can shrink the amount of space a device might take up by having multiple functions in a single wire. We will be able to build smaller devices that still maintain high efficiency, and in some cases will take advantages of new properties that will emerge from this modulation that you don’t have in uniform-diameter wires.”
Source: Harvard Gazette