Voracious reading, another papal habit, also turns out to be good for aging brains and, surprisingly, even better for longevity. One twelve-year study showed that if seniors read at least 3.5 hours a day, they were 17 percent less likely to die by a certain age than controls who didn’t read. Read more than that and you increase the number to 23 percent. The reading has to be of books, long form.