What four behaviors can add 14 years to your life? Researchers in the United Kingdom started with 20,000 healthy men and women between ages 45 to 79. They scored the participants on their current lifestyle and then turned them loose for a decade or more. During that time, they documented who had died and from what causes. After about 11 years, scientists tested the remaining participants and compared their results with their beginning health scores.
Read the behaviors below, and give yourself one point for each of them you do on a regular basis:
1. I do not smoke and do not have a history of smoking.
2. I get at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day, either at work or at home.
3. I drink no more than 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks a day. (One drink is 4-5 ounces of wine, 8-12 ounces of beer, 1 ounce shot of liquor.)
4. I eat 2 to 3 cups of fruits and vegetables a day.
Don’t smoke. Be physically active. Drink moderately if you drink at all. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Yeah, yeah, we know all that.
So what? If you practice all four of these behaviors regularly, it could be like adding 14 years to your life when compared with someone who does not practice these habits.
A study by researchers in the United Kingdom of middle-age people found that those who scored zero on the questions are four times as likely to die over an 11-year period (especially of heart disease) as those who score a 4. Those who score a 2 are twice as likely to die as someone who scores a 4.
The combined effect of habits can be significant. In other words, a marathon runner who lives on beer and pretzels probably will have a shorter life — even though he is active — than a walker who has an occasional glass of wine and eats regular meals high in fruits and vegetables. Like mile markers on a 26-mile marathon, every year counts.
The study researchers also adjusted for several variables that can throw off research results — such as dying from old age or getting hit by a car, and reported a strong association between the number of behaviors these folks practiced and their relative risk of dying.
The strongest relationship was seen in deaths related to heart disease and stroke. The participants who smoked, were physically inactive, did not drink moderately and did not eat lots of fruits and vegetables were four times as likely to die (particularly from heart disease) as those who had the opposite habits.
