8 steps for staying healthier longer

Your genes play the biggest role in how long you'll live. But "if you adopt a healthy lifestyle, you maximize your genetic potential," says S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., a professor of public health at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Maintaining social relationships is a way to stay young at heart, but these other strategies may also boost your life expectancy and improve your quality of life:

1. Stay active. Exercise is good for your body and may keep your brain sharp and increase your life span. In a study of Taiwanese people, those who exercised for just 15 minutes per day extended their lives by three years; those who exercised 30 minutes per day boosted life expectancy by about four years.

2. Eat your fruits and veggies. People who consumed five daily servings lived three years longer than those who never ate produce. That's accord­ing to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that looked at more than 71,000 people for 13 years.

3. Reach for whole grains. Harvard School of Public Health researchers recently reported that people in a large study who ate 28 grams daily—the amount in less than two slices of 100 percent whole-grain bread—reduced their overall risk of death by 5 percent and their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 9 percent.

4. Don't smoke. Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years less than it is for nonsmokers, says the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read about anti-aging supplements and see our Retirement Planning Guide for unbiased, expert advice on planning for your next chapter in life.

5. Sleep enough, but not too much. Researchers in Europe reported that regularly sleeping less than 7 hours per night upped the risk of death by 12 percent; sleeping 9 hours or more boosted risk by 30 percent.

6. Maintain a healthy weight. Research has found the lowest death rates among men and women with a normal body weight.

7. Minimize red meat. "The more often you eat vegetarian, the better," explains Thomas T. Perls, M.D., director of the New England Centenarian Study.

8. Manage stress. Consider trying meditation as a stress-reducer. It preserves brain neurons as we age, helping to keep memory sharp, according to recent research from UCLA.