Regular church attendance lengthens life more than diet and exercise, longevity expert says

(The Washington Stand) – Attending church services may open the door to eternal life—but it will also extend your life on Earth more than diet or exercise, according to the foremost expert on global longevity.

Dan Buettner, who won three Emmy Awards for his groundbreaking 2023 documentary “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones,” revealed the deep benefits that faith in God renders to those who want to live a long and prosperous life. Although America faces an epidemic of chronic diseases, “only about 20% of how long you live is dictated by your genes,” he told “Mornings with Maria” on Aug. 30. A healthy lifestyle incorporating diet, exercise, and stress management means the average person can live “12 more years in good health.”

But the statistics he shared proved that an active faith in God, including weekly church attendance, had potentially the biggest impact on extending earthly life.

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Buettner’s documentary investigated regions in the world known for having the longest average lifespan. Researchers interviewed 263 centenarians—people who had lived to the age of 100—and found all but five “belonged to some faith-based community.”

The healthiest elderly had a common characteristic: “having a faith. We know people who go to church—or temple, or even mosque—and show up four times per month are living four to 14 years longer than people who aren’t.” The figure may come from a study finding regular church attendance lengthened the average American’s life by seven years—and 14 years for African Americans.

That number dwarfed other, more intuitive lifehacks, including regular exercise and diet. “For a 20-year-old, if you move away from the standard American diet towards a Blue Zone diet—which is to say whole food, plant-based—it’s worth about 10 years of extra life expectancy, and for a 60-year-old, it’s still worth about six years,” he said.

One food, particularly, stood out above others: beans. “If you’re eating a cup of beans a day, it’s worth about four extra years of life expectancy over getting your protein from less healthy sources,” Buettner said, as he raved about minestrone soup. “Every time that you mix a grain with a bean, they come together, they make a whole protein. … These are cheap foods, they’re shelf stable, and every American can afford them.”

Those in the healthiest lifestyle moved organically, about every 20 minutes, without sitting for long periods of time. But anyone can benefit from simple exercise, such as walking. “If you have zero physical activity in your life, you can raise your life expectancy three years if you just walk 20 minutes a day,” Buettner told Bartiromo.

Strong family relationships also put years in your life. Centenaries agree on “putting family first, keeping your aging parents nearby, investing in your partner, investing in your children,” he continued. “People who are in a committed relationship are living anywhere from two to six years longer than people who are alone in life.”

If you’re keeping track, you can add three years to your life with exercise, four years by eating beans, six years by being in a committed relationship, six to 10 years by eating a whole foods and plant-based diet, and seven to 14 years by going to church every week.

Another aspect of church life that may lengthen your life is stress management. A key factor in living to 100 is “downshifting: either through prayer, meditation, simply expressing gratitude before a meal.” Regular prayer incorporates “making sure our day has certain times where we lower the stress of the human condition, lower inflammation,” said Buettner, a 2011 fellow at National Geographic and muti-time grant awardee.

Environmental factors—including the people and businesses around you—also play a role. “If you live in a neighborhood with more than five fast food restaurants within half a mile of your home, you’re about 35% more likely to be obese than if there are fewer than three,” Buettner added. “If your three best friends are obese and unhealthy, you are 150% more likely to be overweight yourself.”

The study is but one of many that have found physical, mental, and psychological benefits of faith, Bible reading, and church attendance:

• Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a report in March 2023 stating that an epidemic of loneliness has produced health impacts “even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” Americans’ “health may be undermined” by their declining participation in “[r]eligious or faith-based groups.”

• Regular “religious practice has significant effects” in reducing the faithful’s odds of dying from suicides, drug poisonings, and alcoholic liver disease, according to a 2023 study.
• The Blue Zones commend cultures that promote a sense of purpose. “[R]eligious Americans tend to believe their life is meaningful more often than do those who are not religious,” found a 2023 study.
• Americans who believe in God and value marriage are more likely to be “very happy” than isolated secularists, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll taken last March. While only a thin sliver of Americans (12%) consider themselves “very happy,” 68% of the happiest people surveyed say they believe in God.

• An overwhelming 82% of Christians describe their outlook as optimistic and take pride in their church, according to a 2023 study.
• Christians who regularly read the Bible report a higher score on the Human Flourishing Index—which measures “happiness & life satisfaction,” “mental & physical health,” “meaning & purpose,” “character & virtue,” “close societal relationships” and “financial & material stability”—than nonpracticing Christians or the Nones/religiously unaffiliated, a 2023 study found.
• “Young-adult Gen-Xers in the strongly religious class across the three measurements generally reported better mental health when they reached established adulthood than those in the nonreligious class,” reported a 2022 Syracuse University study.

• Women who attend church at least once a week had a 68% lower chance of dying a death of despair than non-churchgoers; men who go to church frequently lower their risk by one-third, according to a 2020 Harvard study.
• Americans who attended religious services regularly were 44% more likely to say they were “very happy” than the religiously inactive, concluded a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
• A 2019 study found “robust effects of religiosity on depression that are stronger for the most depressed.”
• Even if they leave behind religious practices, “people who attended weekly religious services or practiced daily prayer or meditation in their youth reported greater life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s—and were less likely to subsequently have depressive symptoms, smoke, use illicit drugs, or have a sexually transmitted infection—than people raised with less regular spiritual habits,” discovered a 2018 study from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
• A 2017 study found church attendance significantly lowers the body’s reaction to stress and cuts the worshiper’s chance of dying in half. “More frequent churchgoers (more than once a week) had a 55% reduction of all-cause mortality risk compared with non-churchgoers,” reported the study.
• Attending church more than once a week reduced a woman’s likelihood of dying by 33%, a 2016 Harvard study concluded.

Originally published by The Washington Stand