Technology is a necessity of modern-day life. In order to stay connected with the world around us and the people in it, we often do so with a device in hand. In fact, the average person spends

 6 hours and 58 minutes staring at screens

Some of that time is necessary for work, but how much of that time is just wasted scrolling? As people are becoming more aware of their screen time, there has been a conscious shift to prioritize time away from screens. 

By now we’ve all likely done some form of digital detox — where we’ve disconnected from technology, spent time in nature, and come home feeling received physically and mentally. 

There’s a reason for that, and researchers from Penn State decided to dive deeper with a 

. They focused on older adults who may not have as much screen time as younger generations, but also may not be spending enough time in nature. 

What they found in this study was refreshing — that time in nature may help improve the health of 

 as well as create a greater purpose in life. 

The researchers studied 292 adults over the age of 65 who visited a natural preserve in Taiwan at least once a week. Upon visiting, the participants were asked a range of questions including:

The results of the study showed that people who talked about their time in nature with other people felt a deeper attachment to nature as well as a strengthened sense of life purpose. This time in nature is referred to as “forest bathing.”

Previous research has been done on the idea of 

 and showed that a feeling of purpose led to improved mental health, physical health, and quality of life. Thus, between this study and the recent Penn State study, a correlation can be made between spending more time in nature (forest bathing) and improved overall health and well-being. 

As the study showed, forest bathing helps connect people to the present moment and also to the greater world around them. Couple that with social connections and support, and the health benefits increase even further. 

With these findings, researchers suggest it’s important to work towards promoting the facilitation of leisure activities for older adults in nature. The 

more time they spend in these social and natural environments

, the greater their chances of having a healthier, richer, and more meaningful life. 

However, regardless of age, spending time in nature is something we all stand to benefit from. The more time you spend 

 throughout the day should equate to more time out in nature.

Forest Bathing

Getting out in nature may lead to improved health and quality of life for adults over the age of 65. 

As humans age, our brains shrink. Studies show that the human brain 

 of its weight every decade past the age of 40, and likely even quicker after age 70. This shrinking affects our cognitive abilities, including memory and more. 

However, a small population of people over the age of 80 have managed to slow down the shrinking of their brains and thus, have the memory of someone in their 50s or 60s. 

 (named such by Northwestern University’s Mesulam Center researchers) are people over the age of 80 who have managed to maintain a youthful brain that functions like someone 20 to 30 years younger.  

Northwestern University has been studying SuperAgers

 and their unusually great memories for nearly 15 years and has uncovered some truly incredible findings.  

You may at first think that these SuperAgers have excelled in memory because they’re smarter, but researchers have found that’s not the case. 

IQ levels of SuperAgers are similar to the average aging people

. So, the enhanced cognitive function is not due to intelligence. 

One of the main reasons that SuperAgers’ brains don’t shrink at the typical speed is because their 

The cortex is the part of the brain that is in charge of three major things:

As most people age, their cortex shrinks, which causes a decline in the above cortex functions. 

Another finding that researchers at Northwestern identified is that SuperAger brains have 

, which is the part of the brain that is connected to the hippocampus. 

If someone has Alzheimer’s disease, the entorhinal cortex is one of the key areas that’s affected. That’s often due to abnormalities in the nerve cells, called tau tangles.

Economo neurons are a rare brain cell that allows for 

 of humans, apes, elephants, whales, and dolphins. 

These neurons are found in the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain, which allows for the linking of cognition and emotion, both of which are integral to memory. 

Beyond the science of what’s happening inside the brain of a SuperAger, researchers found that SuperAgers also share some similarities when it comes to 

The following may play a role in the prolonged strength and memory of SuperAger brains:

For the past nearly 15 years, Northwestern University Mesulam Center has been researching a unique group of adults in their 

. These adults are over the age of 80 and their brains have the memory capacity of people who are 20-30 years younger. 

Anyone who thinks they fit the bill can apply, but 

only about 10% of applicants are eligible for the program

In order to be eligible you not only have to be over the age of 80, but you also must have an incredibly strong memory that can quickly and easily remember things from your past. 

Participants undergo surveys about memory, blood sample collection, MRI brain imaging, and brain donation after death to help researchers learn more about the different factors that contribute to such strong brain health later in life.

SuperAgers

Researchers have identified a group of men and women over 80 who exhibit the cognitive function of those decades younger

Did you know that walking is one of the best things you can do for your health? Countless studies have been conducted on the benefits of walking, and research reveals that this everyday act you’ve been doing since you were a baby is considered by top-tier doctors and scientists to be nothing short of 

 of 1,000 men and women in which researchers shockingly discovered that 

, participants had 43% fewer sick days than people who opted to exercise just once a week

if they did get sick, they were not sick for as long and their illness was not as severe

That’s just one small bite of the incredible benefits that walking has to offer. Walking is also a great way to 

 if you’re feeling tired. When you hit that afternoon slump, put on your tennis shoes and head out for a short walk to get your blood flowing and your energy pumping.

And if you’re feeling a bit blue, you can count on walking to improve your mood. A 

walking for just 10 minutes decreases feelings of anger, sadness, and hostility

. Keep that in mind the next time you feel yourself starting to tense up.

Another great benefit you gain from walking was discovered by researchers at Harvard. They found that those who 

walked briskly for an hour per day managed to decrease the effects of weight-promoting genes in the body by 50%

walking helps to counteract the genes in your body that cause weight gain and obesity

And we are just talking everyday walking – a stroll around the block. You don’t have to 

 like Tony Robbins to get the health benefits (though Tony’s Firewalk opens up a whole different level of benefits that you stand to gain a lot from).

Take It to the Next Level With Brisk Walking

Though you can walk at a normal pace to experience some of the benefits above, by speeding up your pace just a little bit and turning your walk into a brisk one, you stand to gain a seriously incredible bonus benefit: 

Biological aging is different than normal aging and is determined by leucocyte telomere length (called LTL). 

Telomeres sit at the end of each chromosome in the body and it’s their job to protect the chromosome from damage

. However, there is a catch to this protection. Every time a cell divides, the length of your telomeres gets shorter and shorter, until there is not enough length left for them to divide. Once the cells reach this stage, they are considered 

build-up of senescent cells leads to symptoms that typically go hand-in-hand with aging, such as a loss of strength and age-related diseases

what if we told you that you could keep your telomeres from shortening as quickly by doing nothing more than walking briskly for 

? Today is your lucky day because we are here to tell you just that.

Researchers from the University of Leicester have recently been working on a groundbreaking study and the results are in: 

a daily 10-minute brisk walk not only gives you a longer life expectancy, but it specifically can give you 

Though you can’t slow down your actual aging, you do hold the power to slow down your biological aging and give yourself more time to feel younger and better. Brisk walking is just one of the ways that you can do this.

Tony Robbins has incorporated into his life a number of different advancements in precision and regenerative medicine to extend the length of his life. By doing this, Tony has, in less than a year, 

. He shaved 11 years off of his biological age, and you can do the same. Though not easy, you too can have the strength and stamina that Tony does in his sixties by taking control of your own health and working to restore your body at a cellular and molecular level.

LIFE FORCE is the guide to some of the most important questions about health and wellness with answers from some of the top doctors and scientists in regenerative medicine

. Tony shares his journey in this life-changing book in order to help you become the CEO of your own health and your entire life.

Brisk Walking to Slow Aging

Brisk Walking

While breakthroughs in the healthspan revolution are making it possible for people to live longer lives, it’s important to remember that 

of years that matters most — it’s the 

 You could live to be 120 years old and be the picture of perfect health until the day that you pass on, but if all of those years were spent worrying, being angry, or regretful, then is it really worth living longer?

Suffering is a part of human nature, as we have a two million-year-old “fight or flight” brain that evolved to protect us from saber-toothed tigers. The tigers are long gone, but our brains are still 

 It overblows everyday struggles, often turning small bumps in the road into matters of life and death. 

But what’s absolutely fascinating is that we have 100% control over our minds. In fact, there are many tools that you can use to direct your thoughts away from a place of fear, and into a place of abundance and gratitude. As Life Force author and peak performance strategist Tony Robbins says,

 the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions

 — and below you’ll discover a simple tool to keep those emotions in check. 

Use Your Mind to Control Your Emotional Home

In order to change your mindset from a negative place to a positive one, you need to understand where your emotional home is. 

Your emotional home is the place that your mind always goes back to 

time and time again, regardless of the external environment. In other words, your emotional home is your emotional pattern when things are good, and when things are bad.

And being aware of your emotional patterns (and changing them, if necessary) is important because 

where you’re living emotionally ultimately determines what your life will be like. 

For instance, if you’re wealthy and successful in your career, but your habitual emotions are ones of feeling inadequate and unfulfilled, you’ll have an insecure life. If you have a wonderful family, career, and home but are constantly comparing yourself to others and wanting what they have, you’ll live a life of envy. 

This emotional pattern follows you like a shadow

 until you consciously and deliberately draw a line in the sand and change it. 

Luckily, there are three conscious decisions you can make to change your emotional patterns for the better. These three, simple decisions are what Tony Robbins has used throughout his entire life and career to direct his own mind away from fear, so he can instead use it to help others and make an impact. 

If you focus on the worst-case scenario of any situation, your mind moves into a place of fear. If you focus on the best-case scenario, you’ll feel confident. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is — 

your feelings are created by what you choose to focus on

As soon as you focus on something, your brain has to decide what it means. Is God punishing you or challenging you? Is this person insulting you, coaching you, or loving you? Is life happening 

The meaning you choose will radically change how you feel

, and ultimately control the quality of your life. 

This is the most important of the three decisions, as it either leads to

 taking massive action or accepting the situation as it is.

 As you can imagine, the people who choose to take action (which is often the harder choice) usually have a very different outcome and life than those who settle into complacency. 

Think about a difficult situation in your life that you didn’t handle very well. Now, think about it through the lens of these three decisions. Would the outcome have changed? What would things be like now? 

The next time you’re faced with a challenging time in life, remember those three decisions and use them to 

Because if you’re able to take control of your mind and 

, you can no doubt use your challenges to grow even more as a person, and live a truly extraordinary life.

You can’t control how many days you live, but you can control how you live them.

Mindset

What would you do with another thirty years of life? Would you travel, write a book, continue to work? Who would you spend your time with? What would you accomplish? Whatever it may be, it’s worth thinking about — because 

age-reversing technologies are accelerating at an exponential rate

, making the future come faster than ever imagined.

But before we dive into these stunning advances in technology, you might be wondering what exactly the term ‘exponential technology’ even means. Put most simply, 

exponential technology is any technology that doubles in power while dropping in price on a regular basis.

Entrepreneurs who understand the vast power of Moore’s Law have developed many of the most successful companies in the world today: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, Tencent, Microsoft, Alibaba, and Netflix just to name a few. Likewise, the 

nclude some of the most potent innovations in the world

 and are contributing greatly to advancements in human longevity.

Biotechnology is one such area that is growing at an exponential rate, serving as a major catalyst in extending human healthspan. Take a look at these comparisons to see just how far we’ve come in the past couple of decades:

Because of these groundbreaking advancements, sooner than later 

we will all have our own personal AI that will collect and monitor our health data, enabling us to ultimately become “the CEOs of our own health

,” and thus take the necessary steps to extend our healthspan.

Perhaps the most important exponential technology transforming our lives this decade is AI. Machine learning came first, using algorithms to analyze data and make predictions. Then came 

neural networks, inspired by the biology of the human brain

. What’s fascinating about these layered circuits is that t

hey are capable of unsupervised learning from unstructured data 

— simply unleash a neural net on the internet, and the system will do the rest.

The success of neural nets over the past five years is nothing less than breathtaking. In 2017, 

AlphaGo Zero became the first computer program to defeat a world champion at the ancient Chinese game of Go with zero data,

 and instead, learning by playing itself over and over and over again — called reinforcement learning.

What’s incredible about this is that AlphaGo Zero’s neural networks 

can be used to help solve what’s been coined by scientists as the “grand challenge of biology”

“Given an amino acid sequence, can you predict the ultimate three-dimensional protein structure that would result?”

Here’s why that’s important: Proteins are essential to life, supporting practically all its functions. They are large complex molecules, made up of chains of amino acids, and what a protein does is largely depending upon its unique 3D structure. 

Figuring out what shapes proteins fold into is known as the “protein folding problem” and if solved, scientists could develop a myriad of new treatments for diseases

is the latest version of AlphaGo Zero from DeepMind, is the solution to that grand challenge, and is 

opening the door to the development of entirely new avenue of low-cost and highly accurate drugs

As AI converges with massive data sets in everything from gene expression to blood tests, 

novel drug discovery is about to get 100-fold cheaper, 100-fold faster, and more intelligently targeted

. Soon, AI will be able to generate novel drugs to target any disease, overnight — and also design drugs that are specific to individuals. 

One company that’s blazing the AI drug discovery trail is 

, founded and led by CEO Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, who has essentially reinvented the drug discovery process by applying 

 — which have been previously used to create one-of-a-kind, fake human faces — to pharmacology.

explosion in potential drug targets and a much more efficient testing process

,” says Zhavoronkov. “AI allows us to do with fifty people what a typical drug company does with five thousand.”

Right now, Insilico is using the system to 

hunt down new drugs for cancer, aging, fibrosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, diabetes, and many others

 — and are also in the early stages of using AI to predict the outcomes of clinical trials in advance of the trial. If successful, this technique will enable researchers to strip a bundle of time and money out of the traditional testing process.

, has made the Academy Award Winning science fiction film 

remote-controlled microbots that travel through the body to deliver drug treatments in precise location

s. This is a crucial advancement in the treatment of many diseases, because many treatments — like chemotherapy for cancer, for instance — affect the 

 body, resulting in significant side effects. 

Bionaut Labs’ microbots, called Bionauts, are remotely controlled by magnetic forces — and once they’re in the desired location, are triggered to release their payload. 

Their accuracy is on par with a surgeons’, whose standard deviation falls into the single-millimeter range

. Today, Bionauts can deliver biologics and small molecule therapeutics with unprecedented accuracy, and there’s much more on the horizon. 

Why you should expect to live to 100. How exponential technologies are transforming today’s health-tech revolution.

Forest Bathing

The Study and Results

Enriching Daily Life

Longevity