On average, Americans want to live to be 91 years old, according to a recent Pew Research survey — a goal that has driven a focus on longevity-boosting practices.

Over 60% of U.S. adults use supplements and most prioritize long-term health and wellness behaviors as part of an anti-aging approach, research has shown.

In 2025, researchers revealed the following anti-aging discoveries that may help you live a longer life.

COMMON DAILY VITAMIN SHOWN TO SLOW AGING PROCESS OVER 4-YEAR PERIOD

1. Vitamin D could slow the aging process

A study by researchers at Mass General Brigham and the Medical College of Georgia discovered that taking vitamin D supplements may protect against biological aging.

Research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in May 2025 found that supplementing with daily vitamin D3 can reduce biological wear and tear equivalent to nearly three years of aging.

Three months later, researchers at Harvard confirmed this correlation with their own study published in the same journal.

Daily vitamin D3 supplementation was found to prevent the shortening of telomeres, the protective ends on chromosome strands, which is a hallmark of aging.

2. Meditation practices may boost longevity

An April 2025 study by Maharishi International University (MIU), the University of Siegen, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences found that transcendental meditation can significantly alleviate stress and slow down aging.

The long-term meditation practice involves silently repeating a mantra in your head to achieve deep relaxation.

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The study, published in the journal Biomolecules, found that participants who practiced transcendental meditation had lower expression of the genes associated with inflammation and aging.

“These results support other studies indicating that the transcendental meditation technique can reverse or remove long-lasting effects of stress,” co-author Kenneth Walton, a senior researcher at MIU, previously told Fox News Digital. “Lasting effects of stress are now recognized as causing or contributing to all diseases and disorders.”

3. GLP-1s are linked to reduction in mortality

A September 2025 study discovered that GLP-1 drugs, which are designed for diabetes and weight loss, could significantly reduce mortality for Americans.

Researchers at Swiss Re, a reinsurance company in Zurich, Switzerland, estimated that GLP-1 drugs could lead to a 6.4% reduction in all-cause mortality in the U.S. by 2045. In the U.K., more than a 5% reduction in mortality was projected over the same 20 years.

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Obesity is one factor that has “stalled progress in life expectancy,” as it is linked to 70% of the leading causes of death in high-income countries, according to the researchers.

4. Creativity and socialization could extend lifespan

In October 2025, various research investigated the impact of social engagement on longevity.

A study published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity found that social relationships can slow cellular aging.

Researchers at Cornell University explored the long-term benefits of social connections on biological aging.

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“We found that strong social ties can literally slow down the biological aging process,” lead study author Anthony Ong previously said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “Strong social ties appear to work in the background over many years, building a more resilient body by reducing the chronic, low-grade inflammation that is a key driver of accelerated aging.”

A similar study was published the same month, revealing that creative activities such as music, dance, painting and even certain video games may help keep the brain biologically younger.

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Researchers from 13 countries — including teams at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and SWPS University in Poland — analyzed brain data from more than 1,400 adults of all ages worldwide. Those who regularly pursued creative hobbies had brain patterns that appeared younger than their actual age.

Even short bursts of creative activity, such as a few weeks of strategy-based video gaming, had noticeable benefits.

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Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Bardolf and Melissa Rudy contributed reporting.

The time of day patients receive cancer treatments could have an impact on the outcome, a new study suggests.

New research published in Cancer, the official journal of the American Cancer Society, found that patients who received standard immunochemotherapy for extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) earlier in the day saw “significantly greater benefit” compared to those who got the same treatment later in the afternoon.

In the study, researchers from the Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Xiangya School of Medicine at Central South University, China, analyzed data from nearly 400 patients who were treated between May 2019 and October 2023.

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All patients had ES-SCLC and received first-line immunotherapy (atezolizumab or durvalumab) along with chemotherapy, according to a press release.

“Our study found that patients who received immunochemotherapy before 3:00 PM had substantially longer progression-free survival and overall survival,” lead study author Dr. Yongchang Zhang, medical oncologist and chief director at the Hunan Cancer Hospital in Changsha, China, told Fox News Digital. 

“After adjusting for multiple confounding factors, earlier administration was associated with a 52% lower risk of cancer progression and a 63% lower risk of death.”

“It was quite surprising that simply changing the infusion time could lead to such substantial survival benefits for patients,” he added.

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The findings align with the idea of chronotherapy, which suggests that the body’s natural daily rhythms affect how the immune system works and how drugs act in the body. 

This means cancer treatments may be more effective at certain times of day, likely because immune activity and drug processing change over the 24-hour cycle, the study suggests.

“This study should not prompt patients to delay treatment or panic about appointment times.”

Based on the findings, Zhang recommends scheduling immunotherapy infusions in the early part of the day.

“Research across multiple cancer types has shown that patients receiving immunotherapy earlier in the day experience longer survival,” he noted. “Our findings in non-small cell lung cancer, supported by both multicenter retrospective studies and prospective clinical trials, confirm this pattern.”

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Gilberto Lopes, M.D., chief of medical oncology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, noted that previous, similar studies in non-small cell lung cancer have shown better outcomes when immunotherapy is administered earlier in the day, reinforcing the idea that the immune system follows circadian rhythms that influence treatment response. 

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“In that sense, the results are biologically plausible and consistent with a growing body of evidence across cancers,” Lopes, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News Digital. “What is striking is that this signal now appears in small cell lung cancer, a disease where outcomes have been notoriously difficult to improve.”

The study did have some limitations, as detailed in the published study. Most notably, the study was retrospective and observational, meaning it could not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between timing of treatments and outcomes.

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With this type of study, Lopes said, “investigators start with an idea and go back and review patient records.” In this case, other factors can have an impact on the outcome, according to the oncologist.

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“For instance, did patients who come early in the day have a better quality of life, performance status and socioeconomic status and that is what made the difference?” he asked. “Or something else we don’t know? These results need to be confirmed prospectively to eliminate known and unknown sources of bias.”

Zhang also pointed out that this was a single-center study including only Chinese patients. “To obtain more definitive evidence, prospective clinical trials conducted across multiple countries and diverse populations are needed,” he told Fox News Digital.

Looking ahead, the researchers plan to conduct randomized trials to confirm these preliminary findings and pinpoint optimal treatment windows based on individual patients’ chronotypes (internal body clocks).

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“This study should not prompt patients to delay treatment or panic about appointment times,” Lopes cautioned. “But it raises an important, low-cost question for oncology systems: If scheduling flexibility exists, should earlier infusion times be preferred?”

“The next step is prospective testing, but until then, this research invites us to rethink something medicine usually ignores: timing itself.”

A widely prescribed opioid painkiller showed limited effectiveness and increased risk of negative effects in a new analysis published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The study examined tramadol, a common prescription opioid used to treat chronic pain.

Tramadol has historically been perceived as a safer or less addictive opioid, which has contributed to its widespread use in chronic pain treatment, the study authors noted.

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“Often, we may use tramadol to avoid more addictive drugs like other opioids, though in fact tramadol is a synthetic opioid. It is much milder,” Dr. Marc Siegel, senior medical analyst for Fox News, told Fox News Digital.

In the new analysis, researchers used data from 19 randomized clinical trials involving 6,506 adults with conditions including osteoarthritis, chronic low back pain, neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia. All the studies compared tramadol to a placebo treatment.

Overall, tramadol led to a small decrease in pain, but the amount of relief was less than what is usually considered clinically meaningful, the authors reported.

“It is notable how minimal the pain reduction was and how clearly the study highlighted the elevated risk of serious adverse events, even over relatively short trial durations,” Alopi M. Patel, M.D., pain medicine physician at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York City, told Fox News Digital. (Patel was not involved in the study.)

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Participants receiving tramadol experienced a higher risk of adverse events, both serious and non-serious, compared with those receiving a placebo. 

Serious adverse events primarily included cardiovascular events, such as chest pain, coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure. The authors concluded that tramadol likely increases the risk of heart-related issues.

The authors concluded that the benefits of tramadol for chronic pain are small and that the harms likely outweigh the benefits. The findings call into question the use of tramadol for chronic pain conditions, they stated.

Study limitations

Most of the trials included in the analysis were short, with treatment periods ranging from two to 16 weeks and follow-up periods from three to 15 weeks. 

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This limited the ability to assess long-term outcomes, the researchers acknowledged.

The authors reported that many outcomes had a high risk of bias, which may have exaggerated the apparent benefits and minimized the reported harms.

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The trials involved several different types of chronic pain, but the data were not detailed enough to draw conclusions for any specific condition. This makes it “harder to generalize the findings to specific patient populations,” noted Patel.

Though the study has value, Siegel said, “looking at slight increased rates of cancer or heart disease among those on the drug is completely misleading, because it is not controlled for other factors and there is no evidence or hint of causation.”

“You would have to first look at underlying characteristics of that group who took the meds.”

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The doctor also pointed out that the study “doesn’t compare [tramadol] with full-on opioids like Percocet.”

Experts emphasize that patients should not stop taking tramadol abruptly, as doing so can lead to withdrawal symptoms. Those looking to change their medication should consult a doctor.

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“I recommend that clinicians and patients engage in transparent, shared decision-making that considers tramadol’s modest benefits alongside its risks,” Patel advised.

Fox News Digital reached out to several manufacturers of tramadol requesting comment.