The Key to a Long Life: Conscientious Habits - Yahoo! News
Long before the age of gene therapy and miracle medical treatments, the secrets of long life were being gathered and revealed in a unique study of 1,500 children born about 1910. By studying these people throughout their lives, successive generations of researchers collected nearly 10 million pieces of observable data and have been able to produce solid insights into human longevity.
"Most people who live to an old age do so not because they have beaten cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or lung disease; rather, the long-lived have mostly avoided serious ailments altogether," according to Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin, in their recent book, "The Longevity Project."
"The best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness--the qualities of a prudent, persistent, well organized person," according to the two professors (he at the University of California--Riverside, and she at La Sierra University). "Conscientiousness . . . also turned out to be the best personality predictor of long life when measured in adulthood."
Their book chronicles research begun in 1921 by Lewis Terman, a Stanford University psychologist who selected 1,500 bright and generally high performing children and began amassing detailed information about their personal histories, health, [...]
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Twitter: @Phil Moeller
"Medical treatment is conspicuously absent from the book's longevity findings. 'So-called modern medical cures have played a relatively minor role in increasing adult life span,' the authors wrote. 'Social relations should be the first place to look for improving health and longevity.'"
For more information about The Longevity Project and to read the Introduction (free), go to The Longevity Project
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There is also a Facebook page with lots of discussion about The Longevity Project.
Thank you, Mr. Friedman, and thank you for all your work in this area. :)
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