3 Ways To Increase Your Health Span, Not Just Your Life Span

Women take the cake when it comes to longevity, outliving their male counterparts. In fact, eight in 10 centenarians are women. However, behind this impressive statistic lies a less favorable reality. While women tend to live longer, their health span and brain span often don't keep pace, impacting their overall well-being.

Enter Maddy Dychtwald, an entrepreneur, longevity thought leader, and author of Ageless Aging. She emphasizes that longevity isn't just about extending your life but about living well—even into your 80s, 90s, and beyond.

Dychtwald doesn't view exercise in a vacuum. While she emphasizes the importance of building and maintaining muscle for longevity, she believes it shouldn't be your sole focus.

Dychtwald next highlights the importance of meditation—or a similar practice that brings peace of mind. She points to science-backed benefits, citing recent research showing that meditation can improve brain function1.

"I love that fact because we used to think that brain health was not in our control at all, that it was all about genetics," she says. However, recent research has started to change this perspective.

"Although we don't have a cure for Alzheimer's disease or other cognitive declines, what we do have is some tools in our tool chest that can either prevent or delay it," she explains, emphasizing meditation as one of those tools.

Moreover, as noted in that same study, meditation also offers physical health benefits, such as supporting the immune system, lengthening telomeres (a well-established metric for longevity), decreasing inflammation, and more.

Another often underrated pillar of lifelong well-being is purpose. Finding purpose in your life can seem broad and overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. You don't need to start a business, travel the world in 30 days, or reinvent your life path.

On the contrary, Dychtwald says, "The single best way of having a sense of purpose in your life is spending more time with family and friends."

Through her research at Age Wave, Dychtwald has found that one of the most common actions people take to find more purpose in their lives isn't related to career or lifestyle at all—it's adopting a pet.

And with a stronger sense of purpose, you might just live longer. According to one 2022 study, having a strong purpose in life lowers the risk of all-cause mortality2, with the effect being even more pronounced among women.

If you want to strengthen your sense of purpose through community building, remember that it's about quality, not quantity. "You don't have to have a million friends. You need to have three or four really good people, whether it be family or friends, that you can open up to, that you can spend time with," Dychtwald says.

Yes, most people want to live longer—but we shouldn't just work toward an extended life span. We should aim for an equally long health span and brain span. Dychtwald reminds us to engage in various types of exercise, from cardio to strength training and beyond.

She also emphasizes making meditation (or a similar practice) a daily habit and seeking out purpose and connection whenever possible.