4 changes to add years to your life
Adopting four healthy behaviours can add up to 14 years of extra life if you were not following them before. This includes not smoking, moderate alcohol intake, taking exercise and eating five servings of fruit and vegetables per day. These results come from a study published in PLoS Medicine journal. This conclusion was identified by comparing people who adopted these strategies from people who did not. Although there is much evidence to show that these factors on their own have a large impact on life span, this study shows that when combined they tend to have a cumulative effect.
The study was conducted by the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council (MRC), on data from 1993 to 1997, on 20,000 men and women between the ages of 45 and 79. Death amongst these people was recorded until 2006. A point scale was given to each person, where each point was awarded for a ‘healthy’ behaviour. With the lowest scorers as having the same likelihood of death as a 4 point scorer. Note that these factors where independent of social class and body mass index.
Although this study does not conclusively prove that changing lifestyle to be more inlign with this behaviour, it strongly suggests that adopting these behaviours will extend the lifespan of someone who does not currently follow them. Also note that the study took into account social class and BMI, adding further weight to the findings. At the end of the day these four strategies are not time consuming or too onerous.
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Interesting research but I hate how they correlate particular behaviors to life span. What if there is another factor/behavior the researchers never thought about that affected the life span of each of the longest living study participants?