Live Longer, Age Better… Counterbalance Negative Stress With an Activity You Enjoy

By admin on March 29, 2010, 10:05 pm

These days negative news abound and they can have a detrimental impact on your health and make you age faster. Even if you are not part of those who fear for their job or have already lost it, you can be caught in the spiral of negative stress that surrounds us.

Whilst stress is critical for survival in an emergency situation and can help us keep on our toes, ready to rise to a challenge, on-going negative stress is harmful. It can produce continued pressure, that wear’s out our body’s reserves and can leave us feeling depleted. Over time it weakens the body’s immune system and we age faster. A new study by the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) confirmed that stress really ages you. Researchers discovered that constant stress causes telomeres (tiny outgrowths on each chromosome in our cells), which govern cell regeneration to get shorter. When they get too short, cells stop dividing and eventually die.

Researchers discovered that the telomeres of women with chronically ill children were much shorter than those of women the same age who were not caregivers. Those women who perceived their stress as negative had shorter telomeres and “older” cells than those who didn’t.

A good way to counterbalance negative stress is to introduce a regular activity into your life that gives you pleasure and focuses your attention temporarily in another direction. Something that can help you recharge your batteries because it’s fun and stimulating. Interviews with a number of healthy 90+ year olds showed that their life strategies significantly impacted their health and happiness. One of the significant learning’s was that maintaining an activity you love can help you age better.

When you are so fully focused on what you are doing that time seems to stand still, you create what is called mental “flow”, something that was discovered by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in a study in the 1970s. When Harvard University researchers followed people over the age of 65 for 13 years, those who enjoyed games found almost as much stress relief and prolonged life expectancy as did those who exercised regularly.

Not all of us have the time, possibility or inclination to join and interact with a group of individuals face to face: an alternative may be to find an online community that reflects your interests.

If you are looking for intellectual stimulus and fun, like stories and history and are interested in understanding how things work, then you might enjoy a social network focused on antiquing and collecting.

By its very nature, collecting is a positive social experience and very extraverted. Collectors love to share their passion and explain the stories behind their favorite collectors’ items. Watching, listening and reading their stories, you start to understand the reason for the existence of many things and very simple everyday objects will suddenly spring to life.

One of the few Websites that combines the informational side of the many different antique, art and vintage items and collectibles with networking and social exchange is atquid.com. This site combines interactive features such as those on Youtube with networking tools such as those found on LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook. This allows you to build meaningful social exchange and network, even if you have not yet caught the collectors bug yourself. The content is user generated and membership is free.

Whatever you do, don’t let the surrounding negativity get the better of you, device strategies that recharge your batteries, give you positive life energy and help you age better.

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