Years from now, historians could decide to call the dozen years or so before and after the turn of the century The New Information Age. And for good reason.

The one-two combination of the internet and smart phones allows you to access information and learn about virtually anything virtually anywhere. You would think that would be a good thing, right?

Turns out that sometimes it’s not.

Turns out that too many choices can paralyze.

So while historians might eventually call this era The New Information Age, behavioral scientists could very well give it a different name: The Age of Information Overload.

Two rather astute academics understood this about 20 years ago and are now well known for the study they conducted to confirm it.

One day, professors Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper offered shoppers a choice of 24 jam samples from a table they placed inside a grocery store. They did the same on a second day, but offered only six jams to sample.

The different number of options yielded much different results.

When 24 samples were displayed, far more people sampled the jams. You’d expect more sampling would lead to more purchases of the sampled products, but that wasn’t the case.

Far from it.

Even though the table with six samples offered drew fewer people to sample the jams, that sampling produced 10 times — yes, 10 times! — the sales than when the 24 were offered.

The professors attributed this to what is now called “choice overload.” I prefer the phrase information overload since the seemingly unlimited options in our lives come from our seemingly unlimited access to information, but either term makes the point: too many options can overwhelm you. So when it comes to your health and fitness, there’s only one thing to do.

Avail yourself to new information — be aware of it — but don’t let it affect your present health habits if you are already meeting with some degree of success. Don’t mess with success until it does what all success eventually does: stagnates.

Now use that new information in your attempt to be successful again, but in that search, don’t stray. Don’t forget the components that created the initial success. In other words, consciously limit that search so that it does not overwhelm you.

In a word, simplify.

Simplify, simplify, simplify. It’s a great goal to begin the new year and great way to improve both your physical and mental states.

Keep that in mind as you keep reading this column.

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Ever hear of “survival proteins,” “longevity proteins,” ergothioneine, pyrroloquinoline, queuine, or beta-cryptoxanthin? Don’t sweat it. Neither had I until I read an article about a review published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and written by Dr. Bruce Ames.

Titled “Can a vitamin combo prolong life?” and found on the Medical News Today website, the article explains Ames’s assertion: if 30 vitamins and other essential elements are consumed in the proper amounts — like ergothioneine, pyrroloquinoline, queuine, and beta-cryptoxanthin — lifespan will increase as a result increasing the production of “survival proteins” and “longevity proteins,” because these proteins limits your risk of disease.

Now if Dr. Ames read my one-sentence summary of his research, he may feel it’s too simplified. But I am not concerned with his feelings as much as your never-ending battle with information overload.

The full body of his work is fascinating and it could lead eventually to monumental breakthroughs, but what are you supposed to do with it right now? Take off a day or two from work to research all those aforementioned terms?

No, but if you simply skim the MNT article, you’ll find that the end simplifies matters. In it, Ames explains what his research should ultimately motivate you to do by saying, “Do what you mother told you: eat your veggies, eat your fruit, give up sugary soft drinks and empty calories.”

To end, I wanted to end this year with a column about information overload because of a feeling that I too often have — and one that I imagine many of you have too often, too.

A sense that you never — no matter how hard you try! — accomplish all that you want to accomplish in a given day. An unsettling sense that someone has looked past the fast forward button on that grand control panel that governs time and pressed the one labeled breakneck speed.

How can you reduce that feeling significantly?

Reduce your choices. Reduce your options. As long as you do so intelligently it’s a far more effective way to be.

It’s the sort of strategy suitable for a New Year’s Resolution if you’ve decided this past year was far too fast-paced and unsettling for you.