Feel younger than your age? It may help you live longer

Do you want to live a long and healthy life? Well the secret to doing so might be a lot easier than you think.

We've all heard the expression, "Mind over matter", and we've also likely heard lots of incredible stories about how our brains can trick our bodies into doing incredible things -- like Monks meditating until their hearts nearly stop, or the placebo effect causing people taking a sugar pill to exhibit same effects as people taking the actual medicine.

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing or ELSA, studied a number of different factors of a huge subject group of almost 6,500 people over an extended period of time. One component of the study compared how old people actually felt versus how long they actually were. 

When the researchers then crunched the numbers, their data showed that people who reported feeling younger actulally lived longer. They also found the converse to be true, sadly: Adults who felt older were almost twice as likely to have died in the next eight years. 

So the key to living longer is staying "young at heart".

The new research letter is published in JAMA Internal Medicine online.