How To Live Longer – Eat Fish

Eat Fish To Live Longer

Around the web you can find numerous tips on how to live longer. Increasing human longevity is an idea that appeals to many people because no matter whom you are or how much money you have, your life is finite and you will eventually succumb to the inevitable fate that all people fall victim to: old age and death.

Because life is universally regarded as the most precious of gifts many of us feel it is worth not only appreciating but maximizing or taking full advantage of what we are given. In much the same way a person would feel that a gift was wasted if it was not used, those seeking to live as long as possible while remaining healthy and active are merely attempting to make full use of this particular gift as it is so valuable.  Your diet plays a major role in your life span and eating fish appears to do wonders for your health.

The Human Life Span

The general consensus on the life span of humans is that with the proper lifestyle (and a little luck) length of life can be extended years beyond average life expectancy rate. The demographics of life expectancies can be broken down so many different ways if one were to list the possibilities the length would be exhausting. To simplify things let us look at only a few demographic factors: Gender and Country.

Currently the basic rule of thumb is that women tend to live about 5 years longer than men in developed countries and that in these countries the average age of life span tends to be above 75 years topping out at 84 years. The country with the highest average expectancy is currently Macau and the good old USA sits comfortable in 30th place at 78 years (see the entire list of countries by life expectancy). When accounting for the rule of thumb between genders add 2.5 years for women and subtract 2.5 for men and you are pretty close to the gender average expectancies.

Longevity Analysis

To very basically analyze these two areas let us identify the obvious differences. Macau is located in South China less than 100 miles from Hong Kong. It is right on the ocean. The USA is of course a bigger and more diverse area. It is full of a wide array of cultural backgrounds and has areas located inland, at sea, as well as coastal. In fact if you look at the top ten countries in life expectancy you’ll find the overwhelming majority are coastal and island communities. This of course implies a diet based more on seafood than inland communities might be accustomed to.

Additionally most of the top ten are developed countries where citizens have access to hospitals and health care. In the USA we do not have a significant socialized health care safety net so often the lower wage citizens of the country do not get adequate health care outside of emergency room coverage and local free clinics. Additionally, because a great proportion of the US is inland, the diet of the typical American is not quite as seafood dominated as other higher lifespan countries might be.

How To Live Longer - Eat Fish

Taking only these factors into consideration we could easily assume that an American diet that resembles a seafood-based diet of a coastal community would increase life expectancy just as adequate health care coverage might do the same. Let us just assume that if an American with the means to adequate health care coverage eats seafood regularly he could duplicate the typical life span of the longer living regions of the world. This assumption however is supported by science.

Eating fish regularly can help prevent dementia and stroke and it can even help prevent premature aging of the brain due to its high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids which are difficult to duplicate in other foods and diets. Maybe this alone can increase an American’s expected life span from 78 years to 80 and get them into the top ten range. 

To further stack the odds in your favor you might want to take a look at some more longevity secrets that I've blogged about.  The more healthy actions you take today will increasingly improve your odds of living a longer life.