For many of us, the idea of being able to live forever is one thing we never really stop believing until the day that we die. The problem is that many of us also have lifestyles that encourage a shorter lifespan and can actually reduce our time to come to grips with mortality. For anyone in this position, we recommend that you consider these ten lifestyle choices that many of us are making that actually puts each and every one of us in a position whereby we could be drastically shortening our own lifespans, even if it seems pretty healthy!
1. Living Alone
Humans need interaction; we need love in our lives. If we want to find that love, though, we have to be able to get out here and find it. Those who take the easy “stress-free” option of living alone are actually limiting the happiness and enjoyment that we can get from the world. Never sharing love and intimacy with another person is a sure-fire way to reduce your lifespan by a considerable margin.
2. Sitting Too Often
Do you work at a PC? Then you need to consider the importance of standing up and getting a bit more rest. It’s estimated by the JAMA Internal Medicine study hat sitting for more than 11h per day increases the risk of death by up to 40% over the next three years alone! This is something that you need to consider moving forward, so if you need to get a stand-up desk you should!
3. Lack of Social Life
Neglecting our friends and loved ones for solitary time isn’t always a bad thing; we all need our own personal space. However, taking the time that is needed to have a social life can improve our lifespan! Likewise, failing to do so increase our chances of passing on early. Prolonged loneliness can have the same negative health effects of having 15 cigarettes a day!
4. TV loving
Many of us love to spend our time sitting in front of the TV and just zoning out, vegging there for hours to come. This can bring on things like diabetes and even heart disease. According to the NY times, every single hour of TV you watch after being 25 reduces your lifespan by around 21 minutes. That’s quite the state, but it’s something you really need to consider moving forward with your life if you want to live healthily.
5. Taking Extended time off
You might think that quitting your job or going for a gap year could be a good thing but it’s actually quite unhealthy for the body. Your mind will get rested, sure, but you will find that premature death is far more common if you are taking that time off due to the serious inactivity that your body will be going through when moving forward.
6. Helping Annoying People
Being the kind member of the workforce who helps out that annoying colleague might seem like a great idea, but how do you come to terms with the stress that they cause you? Putting yourself through the mill just to be nice might seem like a sacrifice that’s worth it for karma points, but it really isn’t if it’s driving you up the wall! This can put you into stressful situations you really had no reason to be involved in.
7. Sleeping In
The worst thing that you can do for your sleeping pattern is getting used to sleeping more than eight hours on a regular basis. It’s unhealthy for the body so even if you can get those extra hours, limit yourself to 7 hours at the most.
8. Exercising Too Much
The last thing that you want to do is lessen your lifespan but unfortunately going through too much exercise in a week can do this to you. Just go to a doctor and get them to give you an idea of what you should be taking on exercise wise as it will give you much better ideas about how you can improve your health and your quality of life in general – just remember that seemingly being too healthy and exercising too much is going to make a marked difference to your overall lifespan moving through life.
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