Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens. And I'm Jan Black. Are you exercising and eating right to ensure that you do all you can to live the longest life possible,

you may be surprised to learn that diet and exercise matter less, and your relationships,

personality, and emotions matter more in terms of influencing how long you live.

And joining us to explain more about that is science journalist Marta Zaraska,

whose newest book is called Growing Young,

How Friendship, Optimism, and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100.

Marta, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

This is a fascinating topic.

Why did you become interested in it?

It came quite naturally from my research as a science journalist.

I've been writing about health and psychology and nutrition for many, many years.

And I was also quite interested in health and nutrition myself personally.

So I was always following very healthy diets and staying on top of all the trends and

miracle foods I should be eating and so on and exercising regularly and

with all the necessary gadgets.

And I started coming across more and more research in my professional life that put the challenge

onto my assumptions about what makes healthy living.

And so I started reading more and more and interviewing scientists.

And what I discovered basically completely shattered my previous assumptions because I discovered that

our social lives, our mental health, our kindness, how socially connected we are, matters at least

as much to our health and longevity as our diet and exercise, if not more. And I was obviously approaching healthy living myself all wrong.

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