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These five healthy habits could add more than a decade to your life


Adding more than a decade to your life expectancy may be easier than you think.

A new study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health studied the effects adopting low-risk lifestyle factors has on the average U.S. life expectancy (79.3 years).

Getty Images.
Getty Images.

Researchers analyzed more than 34 years of data from 78,865 women and 27 years of data from 44,354 men, and defined the following five low-risk lifestyle factors: Eating a healthy diet, exercising at least 30 minutes per day, maintaining a healthy weight and body mass index, no smoking and moderate alcohol intake (one five oz glass of wine for women a day, two glasses for men).

The study indicates that participants who adopted all five of the low-risk lifestyle factors had a higher life expectancy at the age of 50 than the national average of 79.3 years.

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By 50, female subjects who adopted all five of these habits, had a remaining life expectancy of 43.1 additional years. For men, the study estimates an additional 37.6 years.

These numbers differ drastically from subjects who failed to adopt any of the five healthy habits. For women at 50, researches estimated only 29 years left of their life expectancy, for men — a meagre 25.5 years.

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Getty Images

Compared to those with unhealthy lifestyles, the men and women who adhered to the five healthy habits and maintained the healthiest lifestyles were 82 per cent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 65 per cent less likely to die from cancer.

“This study underscores the importance of following healthy lifestyle habits for improving longevity in the U.S. population,” notes the study’s senior author Frank Hu. “However, adherence to healthy lifestyle habits is very low. Therefore, public policies should put more emphasis on creating healthy food, built and social environments to support and promote healthy diet and lifestyles.”

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