Aristotle was the first person to list the five senses as sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Around 2,000 years later, an English scientist added muscular sense — what we now call proprioception — to describe our automatic awareness of the position or movement of our body parts in relationship to each other.

More recently, scientists identified remote touch as our seventh sense. It's the ability to know an object we cannot see is nearby before we actually touch it.

But that's only a partial description of how we perceive the world.

New research indicates we have 20 or more distinct senses, making our interaction with the world and our bodies more complex than we thought.

Two newly included "senses" are balance, which is based in your inner ear's vestibular system; and the sense of ownership, which is revealed by the fact that some stroke survivors cannot recognize specific body parts as belonging to their body.

What does this have to do with staying younger longer?

It's a wake-up call to pay attention to the way your body acts and reacts. You can use daily meditation and double deep-breath resistance training to achieve this.

You should also notice what you're sensing when you take a bite of healthy food, experience pain, or are anxious. Become aware of which activities provide positive sensations and what you want to change.