Extending your life expectancy

If you are 33 years old, how many times have you:

• Eaten breakfast? Probably around 12,000 times, if you eat each day.
  
• Seen a full moon? It's likely around 925 full moons you've seen.
  
• Brushed your teeth? Somewhere around 22,000 times if you brush twice a day.
  
• Felt your heart beat? Let's say it beats 65 times per minute - that would be somewhere around more than 1.2 billion times (1,127,412,000).

Maybe since I'm getting up there in years, these figures are taking on new meaning.

There is another important fact about heart beats in particular. It has been shown that many animals, especially mammals, have about 1 billion heartbeats in their lifetime. An astute post on "conserving your heartbeats" reports that running and other endurance exercise add to your life expectancy:

"Each year I spend as a runner costs me one week of heartbeats, but the improved fitness adds 13 weeks to my life expectancy for a net of +12 weeks. Another way to look at it: Every month of regular running adds one week to my life! Diving deeper yet… assuming I run 3.5 times per week, that means that each run adds 12 hours to my life. How’s that for a good investment?"

The author explains that while it might seem that exercising effectively "uses up" your heartbeats faster, the gains that are made through the lowering of your resting heart rate are considerable.