Four easy ways to live longer

“Longevity” doesn’t need to be an elaborate science experiment.

My grandmother lived to be 97. For decades she was active in her church, had long friendships with her sorority sisters, and she even got to see all six of her grandchildren go off to college. By the time she passed, she’d done just about everything she wanted to do.

With those genes, I feel like I’ve got a good chance of living long too. But I also want to use what’s within my control to stack the deck in my favor.

There’s a whole movement of people who are working to extend their lives, and some of them are going to extremes. Billionaires are doing things like exchanging plasma with their sons and funding organ replacement research. But for those of us who aren’t ultra-wealthy and like our science fiction to remain fictional, there are still ways to set ourselves up for success.

Putin’s plan to live forever

One source of hope may be the shingles vaccine. My colleague Bryan Walsh, who writes Vox’s Good News newsletter, says he brought it up at his own doctor’s appointment recently.

“This began with a study that happened in Wales a few years ago where there was an age cutoff among people who were eligible to get this vaccine,” he told Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast. “What they found was that the vaccinated group was 20 percent less likely to develop dementia over the seven years following getting that vaccine.”

While other studies have replicated the findings, the results still aren’t conclusive. Researchers are still trying to figure out what it is about the shingles vaccine that makes people less likely to develop dementia. One possibility, Bryan says, is that “the immune-boosting effect of these vaccines may protect yourself against whatever it is that’s connected with dementia. So it’s almost like it has a side effect that would be really, really helpful. That’s a big effect if that actually holds.”

We have a miraculous anti-aging vaccine. Why aren’t more people getting it?

We’re not as helpless against dementia as we think

While there’s plenty still to........

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