Adopting a healthy lifestyle is not a guarantee of a longer life, but it can significantly improve the quality of life and reduce the risk of many preventable diseases.
A new study has hypothesized that changing these eight habits in your life can add up to 24 years to your lifespan.
As per a study presented at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting on Monday, adopting some healthy habits by middle age can go a long way towards building a healthy future.
More than 700,000 US veterans were studied by researchers to understand how their life expectancy shifted based on the number of healthy habits they adopted.
On average, it was found that embracing these lifestyle changes increased the males’ lifespans by 24 years and females’ by 21.
“We were really surprised by just how much could be gained with the adoption of one, two, three, or all eight lifestyle factors,” Xuan-Mai T. Nguyen, health science specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs and rising fourth-year medical student at Care Illinois College of Medicine, said in a news release.
The habits include:
- Being physically active.
- Being free from opioid addiction.
- Not smoking.
- Managing stress.
- Having a good diet.
- Not regularly binge-drinking.
- Having good sleep hygiene.
- Having positive social relationships.
Researchers found that the common factors which were contributing to a shorter lifespan were low exercise, usage of opioids, and smoking. It was noted that these factors were associated with an average of 30 percent to 45 percent hike in the risk of death, during the study period.
The increased lifespan observed when adopting healthier habits can be attributed to several factors.
According to Shushing Bajaj, Founder Director, JLA Cygnus Group of Hospitals, lifestyle changes can indeed have a significant impact on one’s lifespan and overall health but the extent to which these lifestyle changes can increase lifespan may vary from person to person.
Genetics, individual health status, and other factors play a role in determining the exact impact of these habits on longevity, he said. While Bajaj noted that making positive changes at any point in life can be beneficial, it is generally recommended to adopt healthy habits as early as possible since preventive measures are more effective than trying to reverse the damage caused by unhealthy behaviors later in life.
Common lifestyle factors that can contribute to longevity include maintaining a balanced diet, engaging in regular physical activity, avoiding smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, managing stress, getting enough sleep, and staying socially connected.
In his perspective, the increased lifespan observed when adopting healthier habit scan be attributed to several factors, which are as follows.
The human lifespan is increasing by approximately three years every generation – a trend likely to continue, a Stanford study has found. Researchers analyzed life expectancy data from the past 50 years and found that people who survive to age 65 are continuing to live longer than their parents. Previous research has suggested that humans were approaching the limit to their longevity.
The data shows that we can expect longer lives and there’s no sign of a slowdown in this trend, Rajesh, a professor at Stanford University in the US. There’s not a limit to life that we can see, so what we can say for sure is that it’s not close enough that we can see the effect, he said. The study, published in the journal PNA S, looked at birth and death data for people above age 65 from 1960-2010.
The researchers found that the average age of death in those who live to be older than 65 increased by three years in every 25-year period, which means that people can expect to live about six years longer than their grandparents, on average. The trend continued at a relatively stable pace over the entire 50-year period and in all 20 countries that they analyzed. Factors like medical breakthroughs caused minor fluctuations in how quickly lifespans increased, but these variations averaged out over time.
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