This is an interesting article from Esquire - It's short, so below it is a longer piece from the Association for Psychological Science. Below that is the abstract - the full article is hidden from public view behind a greedy pay wall.

The data for this study comes from an open access data collection project, available here and here.

Full Citation:
Hill, PL & Turiano, NA. (2014, May 8). Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood. Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177.0956797614531799

Have a Purpose, Live Much Longer

It doesn't matter what it is. If you care for something other than yourself, you'll live much longer.

By Ned Hepburn on May 12, 2014

Is your passion riding a bike with a bunch of boxes on it? Good. You'll live longer. 
Unless you die in a horrible bike/box accident.

Life got you down? Can't get a handle on things? Staring into the abyss of your soul, turning frantically to whiskey, weird drugs and the dredges of society in the hopes that you'll feel something, anything? Well, first, perhaps switch to beer. Second, maybe find yourself a purpose. Because if Navin R. Johnson has a special purpose, you should, too.

Seriously. Scientists are saying that "having a purpose" in life will add years onto said life.

Six thousand people from all walks of life were part of a 14-year study. Some admitted to wandering aimlessly while others were focused and driven. Unsurprisingly, the most focused people -- the ones that had a "purpose" -- lived longer. Interestingly, 9% of the subjects died in the 14 year period and those that died had reported of having a lower purpose in life.

"Purpose" is defined here by living for something other than yourself. Be it religion, your job, a kid, your folks, family, your career, whatever -- life is better, and now longer, if you have a reason to get up in the morning.

Patrick Hill of Carleton University in Canada, who conducted the study explains:

"There are a lot of reasons to believe that being purposeful might help protect older adults more so than younger ones. For instance, adults might need a sense of direction more, after they have left the workplace and lost that source for organizing their daily events. In addition, older adults are more likely to face mortality risks than younger adults. To show that purpose predicts longer lives for younger and older adults alike is pretty interesting, and underscores the power of the construct."

Now that these scientists spent 14 years studying a concept as vague as "purpose," maybe they could be spend a year or so on a deoderant that works past lunch. Just a suggestion that might make your life even longer, scientists.

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Having a Sense of Purpose May Add Years to Your Life

May 12, 2014  

Feeling that you have a sense of purpose in life may help you live longer, no matter what your age, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research has clear implications for promoting positive aging and adult development, says lead researcher Patrick Hill of Carleton University in Canada:

“Our findings point to the fact that finding a direction for life, and setting overarching goals for what you want to achieve can help you actually live longer, regardless of when you find your purpose,” says Hill. “So the earlier someone comes to a direction for life, the earlier these protective effects may be able to occur.”

Previous studies have suggested that finding a purpose in life lowers risk of mortality above and beyond other factors that are known to predict longevity.

But, Hill points out, almost no research examined whether the benefits of purpose vary over time, such as across different developmental periods or after important life transitions.

Hill and colleague Nicholas Turiano of the University of Rochester Medical Center decided to explore this question, taking advantage of the nationally representative data available from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study.

The researchers looked at data from over 6000 participants, focusing on their self-reported purpose in life (e.g., “Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them”) and other psychosocial variables that gauged their positive relations with others and their experience of positive and negative emotions.

Over the 14-year follow-up period represented in the MIDUS data, 569 of the participants had died (about 9% of the sample). Those who had died had reported lower purpose in life and fewer positive relations than did survivors.

Greater purpose in life consistently predicted lower mortality risk across the lifespan, showing the same benefit for younger, middle-aged, and older participants across the follow-up period.

This consistency came as a surprise to the researchers:

“There are a lot of reasons to believe that being purposeful might help protect older adults more so than younger ones,” says Hill. “For instance, adults might need a sense of direction more, after they have left the workplace and lost that source for organizing their daily events. In addition, older adults are more likely to face mortality risks than younger adults.”

“To show that purpose predicts longer lives for younger and older adults alike is pretty interesting, and underscores the power of the construct,” he explains.

Purpose had similar benefits for adults regardless of retirement status, a known mortality risk factor. And the longevity benefits of purpose in life held even after other indicators of psychological well-being, such as positive relations and positive emotions, were taken into account.

“These findings suggest that there’s something unique about finding a purpose that seems to be leading to greater longevity,” says Hill.

The researchers are currently investigating whether having a purpose might lead people to adopt healthier lifestyles, thereby boosting longevity.

Hill and Turiano are also interested in examining whether their findings hold for outcomes other than mortality.

“In so doing, we can better understand the value of finding a purpose throughout the lifespan, and whether it provides different benefits for different people,” Hill concludes.

Preparation of the manuscript was supported through funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant T32-MH018911-23), and the data collection was supported by Grant P01-AG020166 from the National Institute on Aging.

* * * * *

Purpose in Life as a Predictor of Mortality Across Adulthood

Patrick L. Hill [1], Nicholas A. Turiano [2]

1. Department of Psychology, Carleton University
2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York

Abstract

Having a purpose in life has been cited consistently as an indicator of healthy aging for several reasons, including its potential for reducing mortality risk. In the current study, we sought to extend previous findings by examining whether purpose in life promotes longevity across the adult years, using data from the longitudinal Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) sample. Proportional-hazards models demonstrated that purposeful individuals lived longer than their counterparts did during the 14 years after the baseline assessment, even when controlling for other markers of psychological and affective well-being. Moreover, these longevity benefits did not appear to be conditional on the participants’ age, how long they lived during the follow-up period, or whether they had retired from the workforce. In other words, having a purpose in life appears to widely buffer against mortality risk across the adult years.

Fitness Friday - Fitness News and Information You Can Use

 

For this week's Fitness Friday, I serve up four good articles - one on how diet and exercise can contribute to healthy longevity, an article from Eric Cressey on band training, and two articles from T-Nation - an older gem from Charles Staley and an interesting piece on using drop sets for strength and size.

From Medical News Today, new research suggests that red meat and exercise are the keys to healthy aging.

Red meat and exercise could be the key to keeping body and mind in peak condition as we age

Thursday 27 February 2014

Protein loading to improve muscle performance isn't just for athletes and bodybuilders, with Deakin University researchers finding that a protein rich diet incorporating lean red meat combined with strength training improved the size and strength of muscles in elderly women.

The researchers believe the study's results show that the combination of red meat and strength training could be the key to reducing the impact age-related muscle loss has on the risk of falls and the ability of the elderly to undertake day-to-day activities such as getting out of a chair. In light of these positive results the study is being extended to look at the impact that increased dietary protein combined with strength training also has on the mental health and wellbeing of older people.

Read the whole article.

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From Cressey Performance, an excellent article on using heavy bands for power training.

Band-Resisted Training for Power

Published on April 12th, 2014
Written by: Eric Cressey

Chat with any powerlifter about how he utilizes bands in his training, and you'll likely hear that they’re used for accommodating resistances to build strength. In other words, you can set up the bands to make an exercise harder at the portions of the strength curve at which you’re strongest. And, this is certainly an awesome application that’s helped thousands of lifters (myself included) to build strength.

Being a former competitive powerlifter, until just a few years ago, I’d looked at bands as something that could only make an exercise harder. Over the years, though, I've come around and begun to look for ways to utilize them to make things easier with our beginners. And, obviously, using them for pull-up and push-up assistance can be extremely helpful with working with new clients.

I did not, however, realize until just recently that there was also a middle ground between these two extremes (advanced lifter and novice client). In this capacity, more and more, we use bands with our athletes to be able to train power more aggressively, and more frequently. How do the bands fit in? They lower the landing stress on more horizontal and lateral power exercises.

Read the whole article.

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Here is an old article that came up recently on Facebook, but it is still entirely relevant - from T-Nation.

7 Hard Truths About Lifting

by Charles Staley
08/20/13

Here's what you need to know...

• No matter what the goal, you simply can't go wrong by making strength a priority.
• Check your ego. Allow yourself to be coached by someone more knowledgeable.
• Numbers don't lie. If you're getting stronger, you're getting better.
• Stop working hard for the sake of working hard. Practice training economy and maximize the results of your efforts.

Over my 30-year career in the fitness biz, I've experimented with a lot of things that seemed promising at first, only to end up on the scrap heap in the end. But seven concepts have remained tried and true over the past three decades. As a bonus, I'll also share three ideas that I'm taking a second look at.

Read the whole article.

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Here is another piece from T-Nation, on using drop sets for strength and power.

Masochistic Mechanical Drop Sets

by Ben Bruno
04/17/14


Here's what you need to know...

•  Mechanical drop sets allow you to switch to an easier exercise or an easier variation of the same exercise as a means to extend the set further – a great way to add muscle to stubborn body parts.
•  Don't go overboard. Two to four sets is adequate for upper body exercises, while 1-2 sets should be plenty for lower body.

Drop sets are a time-tested, muscle-building technique. You take a weight and rep it out, reduce the weight and rep out again, and then reduce the weight further and do it again. Essentially you reduce the weight as a means to keep the set going.

Mechanical drop sets follow a similar concept, only rather than reduce the load as you fatigue, the load stays the same throughout. You simply switch to an easier exercise or an easier variation of the same exercise to extend the set further. The key is to use exercises that sequence well together and require little-to-no setup changes so you can transition from one exercise to the next with minimal disruption to the flow of the set.

There are many different and effective ways to employ mechanical drop sets for both upper body and lower body work. Here are eight of the best, along with examples for each.

Read the whole article.

Robert Krulwich - Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis

Over at his NPR blog, Krulwich Wonders, Robert Krulwich looks at the evidence for the "guys are fragile" thesis to explain why men die, on average, quite a bit younger than women.

Some of the evidence:

• "the ratio of males to females ... has been estimated to be from 107 to 170 males per 100 females."
• "105 males are born for every 100 females"
• "male disadvantage spikes during the teens and early twenties, when young men fight, go to war, dare, and don't wear motorcycle helmets - deaths are increasingly accidental, suicidal, homicidal or war related"
• "In America, nine out of 10 of the so-called "supercentarians" (over 110) are female"

It doesn't look good for the males. Some of the things that make us male, make us masculine, may also lead us to younger deaths.

Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis

by ROBERT KRULWICH
June 17, 2013

The 19th century just lost its last living man.

Jiroemon Kimura, of Kyotango, Japan, was born in April 1897, lived right through the 20th century and died last Wednesday. He was 116. According to the Guinness Book of Records (which searches for these things) he was the last surviving male born in the 1800s. All the other boys from that century, as best we know, are dead.

The ladies, however, are still ticking. Misao Okawa of Osaka is now officially the oldest person on the planet. She was born in 1898. There are four others, two in Britain, one in the USA, and another in Japan — all 19th century-born, all female, all still alive.

Once again, the ladies have outlasted the gentlemen. Not that that's a big surprise.

Women, on average, seem to take a little longer to die. But here's what I didn't know. Women, it turns out, don't just win in the end. It seems that women consistently outlive men in every age cohort. Fetal boys die more often than fetal girls. Baby boys die more often than baby girls. Little boys die more often than little girls. Teenage boys, twenty-something boys, thirty-something boys — in every age group, the rate of death for guys is higher than for women. The difference widens when we hit our fifties and sixties. Men gallop ahead, then the dying differential narrows, but death keeps favoring males right to the end.

After that, everybody's dead.

So Death, it turns out, is not an equal opportunity avenger. It seems to consistently favor males. Why? What is it about maleness that brings Death knocking?

The Fetal Difference

First off, whatever we males are doing wrong, nature seems to know about it. Because when human babies are conceived, says a 2002 study, "the ratio of males to females ... has been estimated to be from 107 to 170 males per 100 females." The storks, it seems, drop extra boy babies into wombs, almost as if they know what's coming. But even with a boost at conception, male fetuses don't make it out of the uterus as often as female fetuses. The death differential, says the study, "has been estimated to be from 111 to 160 males per hundred females." So miscarriages are mostly male.

The Baby Difference

Then come birthdays. More boy babies get born than girl babies. This is true all over the world. In America, it's 105 males for every 100 females. But as soon as they're out, the boys start to go. Male babies born prematurely die more often than females. Birth weight is not as strong a predictor as gender. You can be born impossibly small, and if you're a girl you are still slightly more likely to make it through.

The Adolescent Difference

The male disadvantage spikes during the teens and early twenties. This is the time when young men fight, go to war, dare and don't wear motorcycle helmets. Their deaths here are increasingly accidental, suicidal, homicidal or war related. "If deaths from violence are excluded," says a study from the Society of Actuaries, the spike in the early 20s disappears completely, though the female advantage remains. Not too long ago, young women got pregnant and many died having babies during their twenties, but in the modern era, childbirth mortality is down; male derring-do less so.

The Middle Years Difference

Here the gender difference narrows and holds steady, but if you look across the years, men are more likely to die from injuries, and (at least in the USA), from suicide, respiratory cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema and coronary heart disease. The leading female diseases, breast cancer and cervical cancer, do damage, but not as much as the male diseases.

The Oldies Difference

Somewhere in our fifties, the men begin to accelerate their dying, and that difference peaks in our sixties and early seventies and then narrows. In the last lap, among the oldest of the oldies — people 110 and over — women are lopsidedly the survivors. In America, nine out of 10 of the so-called "supercentarians" are female. Jiroemon Kimura, the farmer/mailman who died last week in Japan, — was a double exception; he was not only super-old, he was a super-old male. That's very rare.

But Why The Difference?

Which brings us back to the deeper question (again, we're talking not about you in particular; we are making a statistical argument based on averages): Is there something about being a male that all by itself, shortens a lifespan? And if so, is it correctible or built-in? The most famous paper on this subject Why Men Die Younger, comes from an actuary (naturally) working in Seattle, Barbara Blatt Kalben. In 2002, she wrote that being a guy is definitely more dangerous, but she has a bevy of reasons why that might be, and she doesn't choose a winner.

Blame Testosterone?

There are obvious behavioral differences between men and women, she writes. Some of them might be cultural. Men are more violent which puts them in harm's way more often. They consistently consume more tobacco, alcohol and drugs, which makes them sicker (then deader) later on. The explanations for this difference could be chromosomal or hormonal (more testosterone) and therefore hard to change; or they could be learned.

Blame Size?

Other explanations seem hard-wired, and not fixable. Men, she notes, are generally bigger, which reflects a general rule in biology, seen in most species, which says (quoting from a study) "that larger (size) individuals (within a species) tend on average to have shorter lives." This has proven true for animals in the wild, showing up in worms, fish, insects, mammals, and, of course, our group, the primates. The bigger among us (again, on average) die earlier. (I've noticed this among dogs, but birds, she says, are a notable exception — Big Bird, if he existed, would likely to last longer than your average garden robin.)

But now comes the explanation that made me wince.

Blame Male Weakness

Barbara Kalben mentions it, quoting an author named "Allen" (I couldn't find his full name, not having access to her bibliography) but he apparently studied data from the Mayo Clinic and in 1934 wrote an essay that said that "mere maleness" is predictor of greater mortality. Something about being male "influences unfavorably the resistance ... to disease at all ages." He called it "male weakness."

The factors which are usually set down in explanation of the greater mortality in males are overwork, alcoholism, venery [I looked it up, it means lots of sex and also hunting] tobaccoism, exposure to the elements, industrial hazards, and irregular habits of eating and sleeping. ... 

For each explanation of the lack of inherent vitality of the male there are objections, but these do not influence the fact; the male is, by comparison with the female, a weakling at all periods of life from conception to death. Venery, alcoholism, exposure, overwork, and various other factors may influence the susceptibility to disease and the greater mortality of the adult male, but they are only straws placed on the greater burden of his sex-linked weakness. 

There seems to be no doubt that, speaking comparatively, the price of maleness is weakness.

So, for many reasons, because of our hormones, our chromosomes, our lifestyle, the stresses of being a guy, we become (or are born) more fragile. This is not exactly my image of maleness, which runs more to Achilles or to Muhammad Ali, but the data suggests in the long run, when it comes to just surviving, it's the ladies who pack steel.

A bunch of years ago on ABC News, in a series I did with Ted Koppel called Brave New World, I touched on the theme of time with two friends of mine, John Lennell and John Flansburgh, better known as They Might Be Giants. They made a music video to illustrate our hour-long essay, which included this refrain: "You're Older Than You Were Before, And Now You're Even Older..." lines that make me smile to this day. Both the Johns and the three musicians they hired (all named Dan) and I (I introduce the song) are older than we were before ... and, as sometimes happens, now we're even older. Notice, there are no women in the video. If we'd included any, chances are they'd have gone on and on and on and, in a gender-embarrassing way, outlasted us.