28 Sep Why Do Nuns Outlive the Rest of Us? Six Tips for Healthy Aging
The good news is that you don’t have to live in a convent to do the things that keep these nuns healthy and happy.
Catholic nuns have a conspicuous presence in the American imagination. They’re depicted as kindhearted innocents like Sally Fields’ plucky heroine in The Flying Nun, and, on the other end of the spectrum, as the ruler-wielding, knuckle-smacking villains of many Catholic schoolchildren’s early years.
The nuns regularly communicate a deep sense of love through their prayers and conversations.
While these stereotypes may tell us more about how celibacy, morality, and religion play out in the collective American imagination than they do about nuns themselves, there is something else that makes these women stand out from the rest of the American population: their remarkable track record of aging successfully. American Catholic nuns experience greater physical and emotional well-being at the end of life than other women and are 27 percent more likely to live into their seventies.
Read more from Anna Corwin’s article in Yes! Magazine here: