Everybody wishes to live longer but healthier.

Rarely do we find people living without any ailment. Most of the people are busy struggling with Hypertension, Diabetes, Heart problem, weaker bones or some other ailment. Their goal of life is to recover faster and better.

Physical activity has been voted as the best factor for longevity. It helps strengthening the bones, the heart and maintaining balance to avoid falls. It is essential for everybody to go for 30-minutes brisk walking for 4 times a week. Stretching and breathing exercises will further boost your body systems.

Get 15 minutes of sun every day (or take 1,000 IU of vitamin D), and take 1,000 mg of calcium. Supplement the calcium with 500 mg of magnesium to avoid constipation. All of this will help promote bone strength as you exercise. Costa Ricans get these benefits naturally: they’re exposed to lots of sun between bursts of rain, which keeps their vitamin D levels high, and they drink hard, mineral-rich water and eat a traditional diet with dairy and legumes that is rich in calcium.

Insufficient vitamin D is our most important vitamin deficiency and is possibly a factor in our high levels of cancer, autoimmune ailments and heart disease. If you live north of a line between Atlanta and Los Angeles, the winter sun is probably too weak to give you the dose of light you require, so you’ll need supplements.

Choose foods that look the same when you eat them as when they come out of the ground. The powerful phytochemicals and micronutrients in whole foods (ones without food labels) support the natural rejuvenating processes of the body.

Obese people, in whom such processes become compromised, tend to die younger in part because of systemic inflammation that occurs as a result of their weight. That leads to elevated blood sugar, lousy LDL-cholesterol levels and high blood pressure. These damage the thin lining of our arteries. The fat also wreaks metabolic disarray that increases cancer rates and leads to joint pain that limits physical activity. Automate your meal choices to create routines that make it easy to eat the right foods. Snacking on healthy foods every few hours helps you avoid hunger and the associated overeating.

Sleep more than seven hours a day. Sleep increases your levels of growth hormone, a critical vitality booster. Half of mature Americans have difficulty sleeping, and all of them may pay a longevity penalty. Try some simple sleep hygiene like dimming the lights 15 minutes before bedtime to stimulate melatonin.

Finally, have a purpose — your family, your work, your community. There may be no better longevity booster than simply wanting to be here. You have one life; it makes sense to love living it.
You can find it at doctoroz.com.

Mehmet Oz is the vice chairman and a professor of surgery at Columbia University, a best-selling author and the host of the nationally syndicated television talk show The Dr. Oz Show

Adopted with courtesy from an article by Dr Oz published on 11th Feb,2010 http://www.time.com