Reddit user explains aging vs cancer

A) Avoid situations which I know will be stressful. Not all situations that are stressful are harmful in the long run, though. For me, meeting people is stressful, but it pays itself off as if you're lucky enough to come off as likable you may have new friends, which will reduce your stress. People who socialize have been shown to live longer and be happier, according to Richard Restak in his book "Think Smart."

B) If you're troubled by something stressful (which has already occurred), I find it best to locate the exact thing that is stressing you and why it's stressing you. If it's an exam coming up, I try talking it over with people and venting. This has helped me a lot. I'll recant Think Smart again, where Dr. Restak recommends asking yourself these questions:

"Am I going to allow this experience to determine the course of the rest of my life? Or am I going to take control of my life? What can I learn from this experience?"

He goes on to say:

"Mentally reformulating things in this way will increase your feeling of control and protect your brain from stress-induced damage. This is important, since loss of a sense of control is the main contributor to the stress response. No matter how stressful the situation, if you retain control of your attitudes and responses this along will lessen your stress--even if you can't affect the situation responsible for the stress."

Couple quotes:

"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." -Michel de Montaigne (useful for stressful situations)

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it. This you have the power to revoke." -Marcus Aurelius (had to remind myself of this today)

Hope this helps.

There is another simple point - who on earth will ever publish a study which proves that the whole ready food and fast food industry makes us sick, that the whole idea of office work (and driving a car!) is deeply wrong and that just vegetarian diet and regular exercise, e.g. agriculture work, and community of our equals is what we need because it defines what we are? ^_^

Of course, the study that shows that common sense has some sense will never be widely pushed through media. First, who will give you money to prove things that everyone knew but forgot? And corporations, who need to push more crap to get more profit, will stop it on very early stage, because that is the best strategy for them.

So, yes, diet, exercise and proper state of the mind (avoidance of stress, attachments, passions) together makes us healthy and younger, but people knew this for aeons without any Wikipedia articles. ^_^

Also, on a related note, there's Peto's Paradox about why cancer rates are similar across species despite vastly different sizes (mice, humans, whales).

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-mere-e...

Paper behind paywall: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711...