Are you sitting down while reading this?
Well that could be shortening your
lifespan.
Let’s be honest: From the moment
we’re born, we’re all dying just as we’re
living. But certain mundane things we
do every day may actually be helping us
get there faster. None of this means we
should even try to eliminate these
behaviors from our lives entirely, but
it’s proof that overdoing anything, even
when seemingly innocuous, can have
serious impacts on our health. Below
we’ve rounded up 11 everyday things
you’re probably doing that could
potentially shorten your lifespan.
1. You’re having a hard time finding
love .
Having a difficult time finding a mate
can shave off months of your life, while
being single for prolonged periods of
time could cost you a whole decade.
A study found that communities with
gender ratios skewing significantly more
male or female caused the minority s*x
to have shorter lifespans. Even when
exposed to short time frames of
competition, such as attending a high
school entirely of one gender,
participants were found to have
generally shorter lives.
On top of all this, another study found
that never getting married could
increase risk of death over a lifetime by
32 percent, and led to the previously
mentioned loss of a decade.
2. You’re sitting down for more than a
few hours every day.
Two whole years of your life could be
cut just from sitting more than three
hours a day. Australian researchers
found that even regular exercise
couldn’t deter the potential negative
effects of sitting for long stretches of
time. Another study published in the
JAMA Internal Medicine found that
sitting for more than 11 hours a
day increased the risk of death by 40
percent over the next three years,
compared to sitting for under four hours
a day. Time to get that stand-up desk.
3. No Friends.
People with weak social connections
were found to die at much higher rates
than their counterparts, according to
research. The same researchers found
that prolonged loneliness could be as
bad for your lifespan as smoking 15
cigarettes a day.
On top of all this, elderly people with
large circles of friends were found to
be 22 percent less likely to die over a
tested study period, and those social
connections generally promote brain
health in aging brains.
4. You’re vegging out in front of your
TV.
Watching just two hours of television a
day can lead to an increased risk of
premature death, heart disease and
Type 2 diabetes, according to Harvard
researchers. The negative effects of
watching television seem to overlap with
the potential negative effects of sitting
too much, but watching television seems
to make the negative effects of sitting
even worse. According to the New York
Times, “every single hour of television
watched after the age of 25 reduces the
viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8
minutes.”
5. You’re eating too much unhealthy
food.
Perhaps this sounds obvious, but the
truth is that so many of us continue to
do it. As far as what foods to especially
avoid, eating red meat seems to shorten
life expectancy by as much as 20
percent when eating extra portions.
6. You’re still looking for a job.
Being unemployed can increase a
person’s risk of premature death by 63
percent. Other more specific studies
found that “the two factors most
strongly associated with higher death
rates were smoking and not having a
job.” Another found that older people
who lost their jobs during the recession
could have seen their lifespan decrease
by as many as three years.
7. You’re dealing with a long commute.
Commutes of about an hour have been
found to increase stress and have been
linked to the same negative effects as
sitting. Long commutes also reduce the
likelihood that individuals will
consistently participate in health related
activities. The greatest lifespan risk is
with female commuters, who were found
to have significantly shorter lifespans
after consistently commuting for 31
miles or more. The cause for the dip in
female life expectancies has been the
topic of much speculation lately, but
while the Swedish research was able to
link commuting to obesity, insomnia and
a higher rate of divorce, it wasn’t able
to pinpoint why female mortality rates
are higher.
8. You’re having a dry-spell.
A study among men found that failing
to climax for extended periods of time
can potentially cause your mortality rate
to be 50 percent higher than for those
who have frequent orgasms. This result
was found even when controlling for
factors such as age, smoking, and
social class. On the opposite
spectrum, orgasms have been linked to
quite a few additional health benefits.
9. You’re putting up with annoying co-
workers.
Missing out on strong connections with
your co-workers can also potentially
mean missing out on a longer life. Peer
social support, which could represent
how well a participant is socially
integrated in his or her employment
context, is a potent predictor of the risk
of all causes of mortality. Although
having feelings of encouragement
coming from bosses and managers
didn’t seem to affect the subjects’
lifespans, those who reported feelings of
low social support at work were 2.4
times more likely to die over the study
period.
10. You’re not sleeping enough (or
maybe too much?)
Harvard Medical School points out that
research has shown that life
expectancies significantly decrease in
subjects who average less than five or
more than nine hours a night.
Most of us suffer from too little rather
than too much sleep, but research
suggests there truly is a sleep “sweet
spot” — at least if you’re primarily
concerned about living for as long as
possible.
Chronic lack of sleep is associated with
a greater risk of cardiovascular disease,
diabetes, some cancers, dementia,
cognitive and memory problems, weight
gain and early death. And some
research shows that too much
(dramatically, unusually too much)
regular sleep could be problematic as
well.
Research has also shown that we need
an average of eight hours to function
optimally, but another, somewhat
controversial study found that getting
more than seven hours of sleep a
night has been linked to shortened
lifespans.
11. You’re fearing death or that you
won’t live for as long as you’d like.
This is a painful paradox. A fear of a
shortened lifespans, or Thanatophobia,
can potentially end up causing – a
shortened lifespan. A 2012 study on
cancer patients ended up finding that,
“life expectancy was perceived as
shortened in patients with death
anxiety.”
Outside of cancer patients, an intense
fear of death can also lead to a three to
five times increase in the risk of
cardiovascular ailments, according
to research on Americans who feared
death from another terrorist
attack following Sept. 11, 2001.
Although a slight fear of death has been
shown to have positive benefits, like an
increase in exercise and healthy eating,
the fear has been shown to significantly
affect lifespans, especially in
adults nearing the age of being
considered elderly. These effects can
also be correlated to especially paranoid
people having weaker connections with
society and increased feelings of
alienation – the negative effects of
which were both discussed above.

nice one