7 EASY Habits to Add Years to Your Life

This is the thing that happens so often is we throw the baby out with the bathwater and we say, you should absolutely get no sun, or you should just get as much sun as you want all day, every day. And the reality is about 25 to 57% of American adults are vitamin D deficient. Your quality sleep is absolutely connected to your lifespan. This one might surprise you.

You can kill 2 birds with one stone with these habits. So here's the reality of habit number 7, which is— Hey there, welcome to the Growth Lab Podcast. I am Dr. Josh Axe, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, founder of draxe.com, ancientnutrition.com, and leaders.com.

And each and every week on the podcast, I cover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, even grow your career, your relationships, and grow spiritually. On today's episode, I'll be breaking down the 7 game-changing habits That can add years to your life according to scientific evidence. And you're going to discover a lot of these health habits are surprising.

But again, according to science, they've been shown to help you live longer and not just live longer, reduce inflammation, help you feel younger, help you look younger, help you have more energy and help you prevent disease and a whole lot more. And I guarantee there's going to be a couple of these habits that are going to surprise you that are the biggest Needle movers.

So I want to go through the top science-backed habits that can add years to your life. Now, to start, I recently came across an article in the New York Times titled How to Get Absolutely No Sun This Summer. And what's crazy is, is that this, this was part of their, hey, if you want to be healthier, this is what you should do, is you should get absolutely no sun.

Now, the New York Times has been known for putting out misinformation. You know, over the years. And I want to go over why what they put out here is really surprisingly not the best advice.

So, in this article, again, published in the New York Times, it suggested that you should be layering up with UV protective sunscreen and gloves, face masks, sunglasses, a rash guard, and a ton of other ways to avoid direct sunlight.

But the reality is, according to science, is that sun— now listen, well, sun exposure will help you be healthier and can help you live longer if it's in the right amounts, right? I think this is the thing that happens so often is we throw the baby out with the bathwater and we say, you should absolutely get no sun, or you should just get as much sun as you want all day, every day.

And the reality is, is that it should fall somewhere in the middle. But I want to go through what the science says about sunlight and about how much you should be getting on a regular basis. And so, the first one here is this, is that you should get sunlight and you ideally want to get about 15 minutes to an hour a day for most people.

Now, listen, there are a lot of factors that play into how much sun you should get. But here's why, a few reasons why you should get more sun. One is vitamin D. That's the most important, right? When you get sunlight direct on your skin, your body produces and can create more vitamin D. And the reality is about 25 to 57% of American adults are vitamin D deficient.

Now, let me also say, you know, so that number ends up being roughly 40% of people are vitamin D deficient. If you're vitamin D deficient, It weakens your immune system, it weakens your bones, it weakens your strengths. It's been correlated with depression and mental health issues. There are a number of problems with vitamin D deficiencies.

Also, vitamin D is a prohormone, so if you're deficient in it, it actually can affect your testosterone levels for building muscle and staying younger, your estrogen and progesterone levels for fertility. There are all kinds of issues with vitamin D deficiency. And again, your number one source, really almost your only source, because you only get a very, very small amount of vitamin D in food.

Food is from getting sunshine directly on your skin. And so again, we want to be able to get this vitamin D every single day. Now, I want to mention, so again, that's number one reason why you should be getting vitamin D. Number 2 reason is that actually, if you get outside without sunglasses, and again, in this New York Times article, they said you should wear kind of sunglasses constantly.

When you wear sunglasses, it actually affects your Uh, your eyes and your body's melatonin rhythms and production. Now, not to say you shouldn't wear sunglasses at all. You should wear them, uh, at certain times if you're getting a lot of direct sunlight and it's hours long.

But if you can get ideally around 10 minutes to an hour of where you're out in the sun without sunglasses, that really helps reset your melatonin levels. And so again, I'm not telling you not to wear sunglasses. You can wear them, But you should try and say, okay, I want to try and be out in the sun for 15 minutes without sunglasses because of what it does for melatonin.

Now, melatonin is the hormone that helps your body sleep, right? Cortisol is what gives you energy, and if you have too much of that, it actually starts to age you and cause adrenal issues and that sort of thing. But again, we want to get some melatonin. It's really, really important. And again, sunlight. Again, so 2 big benefits here of why you need to get sunlight.

One is it helps your biological clock and your circadian rhythms. It helps with that synchronization, so hormones are released, including melatonin and cortisol, at the proper times.

The second big reason is because of vitamin D. Now, I want to go through a really interesting chart with you, and I think this will help you see this better and understand this better, is that if you're going to lay out in the sun, um, you want to typically be out for about 20 minutes, okay? And that will get you your optimal amount of vitamin D for the day.

So about 4 1,000 IUs of vitamin D a day is what I believe is optimal for most people. Now, and by the way, when I mentioned this earlier, around 40% of people are vitamin D deficient. That's just the bare minimum. That's not even optimal. That's just saying you're not completely deficient to where you'll have health issues. I would say closer to 80% of people are too low in their vitamin D levels.

So think about this. 80% Of people likely, and it might even be higher than that, do not have enough vitamin D. Now, why is that? Well, think about our ancestors. Almost every job, people were spending time outside. If they were going somewhere, they were walking. Today, we're indoors almost all the time, right? Most of our jobs are behind a desk.

When we're, uh, you know, when we're going somewhere, we tend to jump in the car and drive there. So we probably have I don't know what the exact stats are, but my guess is we probably spend about a third of the amount of time that we should be outdoors every single day.

So maybe, maybe the average person gets 30 minutes of outdoors a day, and we probably should be getting closer to, you know, a couple hours a day. And this is really important for vitamin D levels. And so really, you getting sun on your skin, if somebody were to ask, well, how much time Do I need to be outside a day in order for me to get optimal vitamin D levels? Well, it depends on a few things.

One is, how much skin are you showing, right? If you're laying out in a bathing suit, you can be out for even 5 minutes and get a lot of sunshine, especially if it's the right time of day. So again, a few things matter. How much skin are you showing? What's the season? So how strong are the UV rays? What time of day is it? And also, a few other things matter. The darkness of your skin.

If you have pale, nearly white skin, you can be outside for just 5 minutes to 20 minutes, and that's plenty of sunshine for you. But if you have dark olive skin or even further black skin, you actually need to spend about 4 times as much time, or even 3 times as long as other people, in order to get enough sunlight on your skin. So think about this.

If somebody who has very pale skin, they need to spend about 20 minutes outside a day. But according to this study, if you have dark skin, if you're elderly or obese, you need to be outside typically 3 times longer in order to get enough vitamin D. So again, 1 hour of— so let's say sunbathing, let's say 20 minutes a day. Okay, you're good. You've got enough sunshine.

If you're out jogging or walking, just spending time outside and maybe just your sleeves are showing and your face, Then you need about 1 hour a day outside for 4,000 IUs of vitamin D. But if you're completely covered up most of your body, you actually want to try and be outside closer to 2 hours or even 3 hours outside in order to get enough vitamin D daily.

And that might seem a lot like, well, 3 hours a day, but think about our ancestors, how much time they spent out. I believe it's something like 40% of our ancestors were somehow involved in farming, and so they were outside a tremendous amount doing chores outside, people having land. So anyways, all that being said, the New York Times again is completely wrong on this.

And one of the greatest things you can do to improve your health and your lifespan is get optimal amounts of vitamin D. Now, let me tell you what I'm not promoting is you sunbathing for 3 hours a day and continually trying to get your skin as dark as possible. It'll age your skin and it's too much sun for most people.

And especially burning, of course, and too much sunlight has been connected to skin cancer and melanoma. But again, here's the thing, I just did touch on this the final time, you want an optimal amount. Okay? So 20 minutes of sunbathing, 1 hour outdoors of walking without your— you know, sleeves on, or 2 to 3 hours outside if you are, you know, completely covered up.

So, or mostly covered up in order to get the proper amounts of vitamin D we need daily. All right. So that's habit number 1. Get a small amount that between typically, you know, 15 minutes to 2 hours a day of sunshine is habit number 1. Habit number 2. Go for a walk after your meals. A recent study found that a short walk, even for just 5 minutes, helps balance your blood sugar.

You know, when you eat a meal, your blood glucose levels spike temporarily, which releases insulin. Constantly high blood sugar can lead to insulin resistance, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes. But here's a couple other conditions. If you're a female, PCOS— it stands for polycystic Cystic ovary syndrome, PCOS, tends to be an insulin issue, and that's been also connected to infertility.

But if you are a person who wants to balance your hormones, this is also very, very helpful. Also, Alzheimer's disease has been connected to blood sugar issues. And so going for a simple walk, ideally 15 to 20 minutes, that's the ideal time, about 15 to 20 minutes, can balance your blood sugar, help you lose weight, and prolongs your life according to this study.

So, think about this, walking around your meals helps lengthen your life. So, what I recommend, first thing when you wake up in the morning, right before or right after breakfast, go for a 15-minute walk. Around lunch, you finish lunch, even if it's cold out, whether you work in an office or you're at home or you're with your kids, whatever it is, say, hey, we're going to go on a 15-minute walk.

After lunch. And in the evening, if it doesn't get too late, hey, get outside for just 5 minutes and go for a walk. But walking has tremendous benefits for lengthening your life, and that's surprising for most people. I think most people think, well, I need to go and I need to work out an hour a day in order to actually get healthy.

The reality is, if you did 2 15-minute walks a day, you were doing some really big things for your health, for your blood sugar, for preventing and reversing disease. Habit number 3, drink clean water. You know, chemicals like lead, arsenic, mercury, PFAS, or forever chemicals, are constantly detected in our municipal water supplies at extremely high levels. And chlorine is another big one.

Now, these PFA exposures is linked to problems like cancer, obesity, brain and nervous system damage, thyroid disease, High cholesterol, decreased fertility, liver damage, and hormone disruption. And it's really important that you get clean water on a regular basis. And basically, it's getting a filter. A couple filters I want to mention for you that I think are tremendous.

One is a reverse osmosis filter. Reverse osmosis gets all of— almost all of these things out of your water. Or another good option that we've used if we've moved homes, Or wanted to do something quickly is using a Berkey water filtration system. Very easy, just put it by your sink. But Berkey reverse osmosis is a company I've used called pH Prescription, another one called Pure Water Freedom.

There's a lot of good filters out there, but getting clean water is another habit I think surprises people, but it can go a long way in helping your health. And part of this is due to reversing— Reducing your toxic exposure. Another big one I would say is not consuming meat and dairy products that are not organic.

Now, I do think you should be getting a lot of animal-based products like grass-fed beef, pastured eggs, organic free-range chicken and turkey, wild-caught fish like salmon. You want to be getting a lot of protein in your diet. And some healthy fat.

But again, you want to be conscious of meat and dairy hold much higher levels of chemicals and, and medications in them, and even genetically modified material. All those things. Habit number 4, this one might surprise you. Take cold showers. That's right.

Now listen, you don't have to have your entire shower cold, but turning it down for 1 minute while you're in the shower, and you could start off hot. And then go cold for a few minutes and then turn them up warm at the end, that works as well.

But taking a cold shower has been shown to, in medical studies, improve your immunity, combat depression, improve circulation, increase metabolism, reduce inflammation, and relieve pain. And when you take a cold shower, it triggers a physiological stress response that improves blood flow and delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues.

Now, there was a clinical study done in the Netherlands and they found that cold showers led to a 29% reduction in people calling off sick from work. And another study even connected cold showers to improving cancer survival. Again, this is all about adaptation.

When your body gets very— when you expose your body to cold in that way, your body starts producing different, different compounds that help fight off disease, even strengthen hormones. We know that actually cold showers also in men increases testosterone, which is great. And also, it's been shown to help with melatonin production to help you get a better night's sleep.

So here's some tips for taking a cold shower. One, keep the water under 60 degrees. So I would say, hey, just get as cold as the shower will go. Start with 30 seconds and work your way up to about 2 to 3 minutes. And again, this is such an easy way to do. You can start off your typical warm, you know, you can be wearing a watch or just kind of do, do the math in your head is fine as well.

Or you could have your phone sitting there right outside the, the shower and then, hey, turn it down for 30 seconds and then up to then 3 minutes where you're just standing there in the cold. And then you can turn it up for the last minute or 2 and then get out. Alternating hot and cold also has many benefits. Habit number 5, you need great sleep in order to live longer.

Again, remember, all of these habits are connected to you lengthening your lifespan. And one of the things that I have loved to do to improve my sleep is wearing an Oura Ring.

Okay, so you can wear an Oura Ring, uh, which basically tracks your sleep at night, and it's a health tracking ring that many celebrities and athletes are wearing to track metrics such as HRV, which is heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels, your body temperature at night, and your quality of sleep. And, basically, it shows you your readiness score.

In fact, I've got mine on my phone here right now and I had a pretty okay last night. I had 80 good. I'm going to kind of show you this. So, 80 good and 76 sleep score. You can see here last night I slept great. I actually had an 85 and a 93 optimal. So, 85 shows— or there's a readiness score which shows, okay, this is how ready you are for taking on the day.

This is how well-rested you are, where the sleep score is how well you sleep. Now, another thing that's important when it comes to sleep is you want to look at a few things: your total sleep, your deep sleep, and your REM sleep. Your deep sleep is what rejuvenates you physically. Okay?

So, if you've been going at it, you've been having really hard workouts or You've just been spending a lot of time running around busy doing things. Well, then you need more deep sleep. Okay? And so, it's important to get deep sleep. If your mind has been racing and you've been thinking a lot and your brain's on all the time, you need more REM sleep. That helps with neurological regeneration.

Of course, REM is probably more connected to neurological issues, maybe even things like dementia where we're looking at something like deep sleep, actual physiologically recovery of your cells in your body. Again, but I, that's what I look at is I'll wake up in the morning and I'll look at, okay, what was my total sleep? What was my REM sleep and what was my deep sleep?

And I know for myself, if my deep sleep isn't good, it means that I haven't worked out hard enough. Typically it means I haven't been active enough actually. So, so not enough deep sleep means that you have been not physically active enough on, with, for most people. REM sleep, if you're not getting enough, it means that your brain has been too overactive.

You're thinking or you're worrying or you're obsessing about something. And you haven't turned your brain off, or you've been on your mobile device at night and you just haven't turned your— again, you've been thinking constantly. That means that you need to adjust that in order to get better REM sleep.

And so again, an Oura Ring is something that I've used for many years and seen tremendous benefits from. And listen, you don't have to do an Oura Ring, but generally you can also just sort of listen to your body to see, see what it tells you. But it is probably one of my favorite tools to be able to track my health because Your quality sleep is absolutely connected to your lifespan.

It's also connected to if you get sick or not with a cold or flu. It's connected to obesity rates. It's connected to immunity and hormones. So again, getting quality sleep is probably one of the most important things you can do. Habit number 6, uh, that might surprise you, and that is how to manage stress. It's not how to manage stress, it's how do you view stress.

There was a great study done by Alia Crum. She's a psychologist, a psychologist and researcher at Stanford University, and she found that the way that you view stress greatly impacts the way that stress impacts your own body and brain. So let me give you an example. If you were knowing that you were going to go through a stress, what could be a a challenging week. So, let me give you an example.

We had this, and this is maybe a really simple example, but we knew that we were going to send our daughter to preschool for the first time. Now, this was a few months ago, but we did that.

And I think we could have thought of it as we knew our daughter was very connected to my wife, she was going to cry, she was going to have a hard time, and we could have lived in this state of almost dread like, oh, this is so bad, and just thinking versus Us having the vantage point of this is going to be good for her. You know what? We want to teach our daughter to do hard things.

And though she's going to cry and though she might cling to mom and she might be upset, we know that by doing this, it's going to make her stronger. It's going to make her more resilient. It's going to create healthy separation and independence for her.

And so, the way that you frame different scenarios and situations, Actually is important or more important than the stress itself that happens to you in many, many cases. And so, let me give you an example of this. You can do this where you go through life, and a lot of people do this, where they have a victim mentality or a hero mentality.

A victim mentality says, oh, everyone's going to pick on me. I view myself as a victim. Well, the world is unjust and not right, and I'm And I'm, I've been victimized and I've been— and not to say there's not real victims. I'm not talking about true victims like a sex trafficking victim.

I'm talking about somebody who just thinks, oh, because I have this thing about me, everyone's against me and all the cards are stacked against me. If you go through life thinking, well, everything's stacked against me, there's nothing I can do, I'm a victim, then you just end up kind of fighting for your survival and, and your body gets in a stress response. Because think about this.

If you truly believe the entire world is against you and that you are a victim, a constant victim of every scenario, your cortisol stays high, your stress hormones stay high because you believe that you're, you're the, you know, innocent little victim and this giant is against you and you have no hope. Okay?

And so you're just fighting for your life and you're yelling and you're living in that state. Studies show that's been shown to actually cause you to age faster, be more stressed when you live in this constant state of stress versus if you have a hero mentality where you think, you know what? Hey, you know what? I'm not gonna focus on some of the people that are in my state or my position.

Let's say you're an orphan, right? And you don't have parents. Well, there are probably some data showing that maybe you came from a single-parent household and you didn't have a father. Well, the studies show you have a greater risk of incarceration and crime and a number of things. And so you could live in that victim mentality and say, well, it's just gonna happen.

I'm gonna be, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end up being a criminal or, or not being financially successful as the data shows. If you just look at the stats, or you could say, I'm gonna have the hero mentality. Who are some people who were in my very same situation who didn't have a father, who didn't come from wealth, came outta poverty, and they were still immensely successful and change the world.

I'm gonna study and look at those people and realize, you know what, this is good stress. Even though, hey, I'm gonna have some stress and I'm gonna go through hard things, and maybe it is gonna be harder for me than other people, that's okay. 'Cause I see it as it's gonna make me more resilient.

In fact, almost every great story of somebody who did anything great in life, most of them came out of a difficult situation, but it helped refine them. And strengthen them to the point to where they could later on overthrow the empire, take on the dragon, do that thing of greatness.

But I hope this makes sense here, not to get a little bit philosophical, but to say this is that how you manage stress, if you believe that you're a victim versus if you believe you're going to be a conquering hero, it makes a tremendous difference in your life. And so, what you want to do is one thing, I want to go through how to manage stress.

Number one, listen, if you know that the environment you're going to be in is going to be truly destructive, you do want to try and avoid those situations. So for instance, let's say you're at work and there are a couple coworkers that no matter what you do when you're around them, they're saying negative things, they're gossiping, they're doing things that are heightening your stress level.

They're always talking about the negativity in the news and they're those people. Just avoid those situations and those people. A similar thing in a workout. If I were going to go to a CrossFit workout today, I probably wouldn't do really heavy clean and jerks. I would probably avoid that one exercise if I've had a back issue or other things in the past.

So if you know something's going to be too stressful or negatively stressful, you do want to try it and avoid those situations. Number 2, alter. If you can't avoid the stressful situation, well, alter it and be willing to compromise. To give you an example, if you're on those negative people at work, you might say something like, hey, you know what? I'm not comfortable with gossip.

Or you may just sit there and listen, nod your head, and get out of the situation as quickly as you can. Or if you're in that workout and you've got a bad knee and you just can't do that thing, well, alter it. You know, don't do the clean and jerk. Instead, do pushups, do planks, do pushups, do that thing that you can do. Alter the exercise or alter the environment.

Number 3, adapt and reframe the problem. Look at the big picture. Adjust your standards, practice gratitude. Where somebody says negative in the conversation, you might say, you know what? I have noticed that that person did this, but you know what I've also found? That person's incredibly caring, right? So, you're re— rather than focusing on the negative, you're now focusing on the positive.

And I try and do this. Like, if I go through the holidays and think about, okay, it's going to be stressful, and somebody might think, well, there's a lot going on with family time, in terms of I got to travel and there's some people difficult in the family. Instead, reframe and say, you know what, what a blessing to get some time off work to be around family.

You know what, my family can be difficult, but you know what I'm going to do this season? I'm just going to love them. We're going to rehash great memories, and I'm going to encourage them no matter what. You just need to adapt to the situation in a better way, and part of that is living in a state of gratitude. Number 4, acceptance. Don't try and control the uncontrollable.

Look for the upside and learn to forgive. And the number 7 habit I want to share with you that surprisingly can lengthen your life and improve your overall wellbeing is ditching bad friends and upgrading your social circle and community. Those people you surround yourself with is so critical. To your success and wellbeing.

Studies have shown that people with strong social support networks have a lower risk of developing heart disease, such as heart attacks and strokes. Social connection has been linked to improved immune function as well as decreased inflammation, lowering chronic diseases that accelerate aging.

So here's the reality of habit number 7, which is having strong social connections, is it can help you adopt healthier behaviors. If you've got really healthy friends that are eating healthy and exercising, it's going to cause you to do that. If they are living a purpose-driven life, it's going to cause you to do that.

If they are serving their family and raising great kids that way, it's going to cause you to do that. So you want to be around those type of people that you want to become like in the future. And that is this iron sharpens iron principle. It's going to help you. But again, that's surprising for some people.

Most people wouldn't think, well, having good friendships wouldn't necessarily lengthen my life, but it does. So, to wrap up, I want to highlight these 7 surprising habits again. Number 1, get sunshine, especially in the morning and in the midday. Number 2, take a short walk after your meals. You can kill 2 birds with one stone with these habits.

You get— you go for a walk outside for about 15 minutes in the morning, Get a little sunshine at that time if you can, or do it around lunch. You're hitting those 2 first habits. Number 3, drink clean water. Get a reverse osmosis or a Berkey filter. Number 4, take cold showers, even if it's just for 30 seconds.

Wear an Oura Ring or do things to improve your sleep, like wearing blue-blocking sunglasses, using a weighted blanket, sleeping with it cold out, but just— or just, hey, try and get to bed on time. And wake up at a proper time as well. Number 6, perceive stress differently and look to adapt to stress, uh, rather than trying having no stress at all.

And number 7, ditch bad friends, create strong social connections that are purpose-driven. If you can implement these 7 surprising habits, it's going to do wonders for your health. And hey, I want to encourage you, if you're not subscribed here to the podcast, please subscribe. We have got some great content coming out and we— I have some Q&As coming out. We have some other amazing guests.

And I also want to encourage you, hey, I've got another episode here I think you're going to love on growth habits. So, you can check these out over here on these top habits that can help get you healthier.