Scientific Articles

The greatest gains in longevity — 9.35 years — and health span — 9.46 years — were achieved with a combination of lifestyle changes including moderate exercise, quality sleep, and a healthy diet.

The Mediterranean diet focuses on quality and lifestyle rather than a single nutrient or food group. Discover the ultimate beginner’s guide to this expert-recommended diet for heart health, weight loss, diabetes prevention and overall wellness.

For most of modern history, we’ve treated consciousness as the ultimate private property: a little glowing sphere of “me” sealed behind the eyes, owned and operated by a single brain. But over the last few decades, science has started to chip away at that picture.

After hitting a plateau around the age of 20, the data suggest that our metabolisms don’t really start to decline until after age 60. The slowdown is gradual, only 0.7% a year. But a person in their 90s needs 26% fewer calories each day than someone in midlife.

10,000 steps is not based on medical or scientific research. 10,000 steps became the unofficial benchmark for our daily steps goal in the 1960s, thanks to a Japanese pedometer. The Japanese character for 10,000 looks like a person walking, so it just sort of became the default over time.

Body composition is reviewed as a composite of several traits each with their distinctive genetic basis, including major effects of genes at single loci. Studies involving twins, adopted offspring, and other family relatives have demonstrated the high heritability (0.4–0.7) of many of the traits involved.