How to extend and improve your life by getting more creative

Cut down on sugar, exercise, stop smoking, eat vegetables, take supplements, stay stress-free, sleep well. Every day we are bombarded with information about how to live longer, healthier and happier. But there is one important piece of health advice that I'm sure you've never been given. It's probably the nicest health advice anyone could give you, but the data to back it up remains a strangely closely guarded secret: make art.

Over the past few decades, evidence has accumulated to suggest that being more creative can do wonders for our health. Programs being developed around the world are beginning to integrate the arts into health care, with amazing results: from music in surgery that reduces the amount of sedatives, opioids and anti-anxiety medications needed, to dance programs that help people with Parkinson's disease walk.

But art helps us not only when we are sick. Crafts, singing, theatre, dancing, reading, writing and painting are inherently good for us as part of our daily lives, even if thoughts of our health are far from our minds. In my future book Art-CureI argue that these “health behaviors” are akin to exercise, diet, and sleep. Here's why and how you should bring more art into your life in 2026.

As an epidemiologist, I spend my days combing through data from cohort studies—massive data sets that contain thousands of people who filled out questionnaires, were interviewed by nurses, gave blood samples, and had brain imaging every few years of their lives. Many of these studies in countries around the world contain hidden questions about arts participation. Using sophisticated statistical techniques, we can look at the long-term relationship between daily arts practice and dozens of health outcomes.

The results are wonderful. People who engage in the arts, watch art performances, and visit cultural venues more frequently are happier and feel more satisfied with their lives in subsequent years and decades. Children who engage more in the arts have a lower risk of developing problems such as depression by early adolescence. Among adults over 50, those who regularly attend live music events, theatre, museums and exhibitions almost half the risk of developing depression over the next few years.

You might be wondering if this has anything to do with art at all. What if people who engage in creative activities are wealthier, healthier, or engage in other health behaviors that may, in fact, be responsible for these effects? The statistics behind this analysis are complex: not only can we take into account potential confounding factors like these, but we can also take into account other factors such as genetics, family environment and childhood experiences, and the results still hold.

The benefits are not just psychological. Children who are involved in musical activities have increasing prosocial skills when they go to primary school. Teens who participate in bands, dance, and edit school newspapers are less likely to prone to antisocial behavior or crime. And older people who go to cultural events have 32 percent less likely to be single 10 years later.

The results are especially strong with age. Studying data from almost 100,000 people from 16 different countries, my team at University College London and I found that having hobbies such as gardening, baking, crafts and journaling were associated with higher levels of health as we get older. Better balance, reduced pain levels, better sleep, longer-lasting cognitive function, reduced weakness, and even a reduced risk of certain diseases such as diabetes—the benefits accumulate the more we exercise. And, remarkably, many of these studies compared art to more established healthy lifestyle activities, such as physical activity, and found that effect sizes were surprisingly similar. In fact, numerous studies have shown that people who spend more time reading books, creating music, dancing, and attending art events actually live longer than people who don't do art.

How do all these incredible effects happen? There are psychological, social and behavioral mechanisms at work here. But personally, the most interesting to me are the biological mechanisms. A growing number of studies show that people who regularly engage in art have lower blood pressure and heart rate, lower cholesterol levels, reduced markers of inflammation, better regulation of immune function and a lower body mass index.

Over the past few years, major advances in biological clock calculations, which compare whether our bodies age faster or slower than our chronological age, have allowed scientists to look at how health behaviors influence our “rate” of aging. And various studies that combine data on our cardiovascular, respiratory, circulatory and musculoskeletal systems, and even our gene expression patterns, suggest that regularly engaging in the arts may even help you stay biologically younger. People who dance, compose music, and paint have younger-looking brains.

I want to be clear: I am not suggesting that art is some kind of panacea. Art can be out of reach for people due to its cost, and there are a number of myths about its purported health benefits, ranging from incredible to downright ridiculous. But there's evidence that regularly engaging in a creative activity you enjoy is an investment in your health worth making this year. And it would also be an altruistic act: economists working with the UK government have calculated that the health benefits of performing arts in the UK are very large. brings over £18.6 billion to society every year.

So how can we all increase our art consumption in 2026? This is a question I return to in every chapter. Art-Cureproviding a “daily dose” of guidance on how you can use the arts to achieve your health goals. Overall, my advice is to think about art the same way you think about food. Avoid the temptation to go out and indulge in the arts – just as a strict diet doesn't work, you won't get the long-term benefits of short-term involvement that then fizzles out. Instead, try to figure out what your “five-a-day” equivalent of fruits and vegetables is. Maybe it's as little as 10 minutes of creative writing every day before you start work, or setting aside 15 minutes every night to craft. Make simple, creative substitutions: swap a date for a concert, a gym class for a dance class, and reading the news on the train for reading a book of poetry.

Also mix the ingredients. The variety of artistic experiences is actually just as important as the frequency of interaction. Every creative encounter brings different sensory pleasures to our brains and bodies, which have their own health benefits. Experiment with new flavors of creative experience, aiming for “mild novelty”—something that's outside your comfort zone, but still something you think you'll enjoy. Make your participation real life, not virtual: On-screen artistic activity tends to be the ultra-processed fare of the art world.

Above all, be a careful cook. In our busy lives, it's easy to want to turn art into a pill that we can just take and forget about. But the beauty of art is that it is not a pill. It is one of the most diverse, complex and personal behaviors we can engage in, one of the crowning achievements of the evolution of our species. Therefore, we should all give art the time in our lives that it deserves. And we should enjoy our involvement – allow art to make us feel inspired, intoxicated, uplifted. Because it's fundamentally, measurably good for us.