The easiest way to add years to your life? A class discussion

written by Sue Frantz | September 22, 2025

This is the seventh in a series of posts based on Becca Levy’s book Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live.

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Ask your students to rank order these longevity-lengthening factors from least impact to biggest impact.

Low cholesterol

Low blood pressure

Low body mass index

Not smoking

Positive beliefs about aging

And the answer is…

Low body mass index (BMI). On average, a low BMI tacks on only one extra year of life. This is one reason BMI is a poor measure of health.

Not smoking comes in second. Non-smokers, on average, extend their lives three years.

Low blood pressure and low cholesterol tie for third place. Both give us, on average, an extra four years.

Holding positive age beliefs is our big winner. It gives us, on average, a whopping additional 7.5 years (B. Levy, 2022).

Phrased the other way around, holding negative age beliefs lopped 7.5 years off people’s lives. Invite students to work in small groups to discuss why negative age beliefs could shorten a person’s life or why positive age beliefs might extend it.

After the discussion has waned, ask a volunteer from each group to share their ideas.

One possible explanation for why negative age beliefs would decrease longevity is stress. If you think that becoming older is a horrific thing, then every passing year will bring you closer to the inevitability of your worst nightmare. And the research bears this out. In a longitudinal study, volunteers over the age of 50 who had positive age beliefs showed no change in cortisol levels over the next 30 years. In contrast, volunteers who had negative age beliefs showed a steady increase in cortisol levels over that same period. In fact, cortisol levels in this group rose 44% (B. R. Levy et al., 2016).

“[P]eople with negative age beliefs, compared to those with positive age beliefs, are less likely to engage in healthy behavior, since they regard it as futile” (B. Levy, 2022, p. 99). It didn’t take me long to think of people in my life who hold negative age beliefs and who eschew preventative medical care and other behaviors that benefit health, such as regular exercise, healthy eating, and good sleep. I can also think of many who hold positive age beliefs and who engage in healthy behaviors.

We also cannot dismiss the power of having a reason to live. In cultures that are more collectivist, people are more likely to live in multigenerational households where elders are more likely to be highly respected. “Japanese children…are taught to enjoy and look forward to spending time with their elders…and many characters in folktales for children are older people who give off a sense of infectious happiness and contentment” (B. Levy, 2022, p. 106). There are some examples of valued elders in American and British literature, but they stand out because they are the exceptions, such as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, Dumbledore and McGonagall in Harry Potter, and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. None of these characters, though, is your average grandparent. They all have special skills.

Conclude this class discussion by asking students to work in small groups to generate three to five ideas for how they could develop more positive age beliefs, or if they already have positive age beliefs, how they could encourage others to develop them.

 

References

Levy, B. (2022). Breaking the age code: How your beliefs about aging determine how long & well you live (First edition). William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Levy, B. R., Moffat, S., Resnick, S. M., Slade, M. D., & Ferrucci, L. (2016). Buffer against cumulative stress: Positive age self-stereotypes predict lower cortisol across 30 years. GeroPsych: The Journal of Gerontopsychology and Geriatric Psychiatry, 29(3), 141–146. https://doi.org/10.1024/1662-9647/a000149