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Everyone knows all the healthy lifestyle choices we need to make if we're going to live longer. But adopting the five major ones at the same time—regular exercise, a healthy diet, moderate drinking, not getting overweight or obese and not smoking—has a massive cumulative effect and can extend your life by around 14 years.
Other studies have reckoned that the cumulative effect can be even greater, adding up to an extra 18 years to your life beyond 'normal' expectations.
This latest study is looking exclusively at the US which, despite its enormous expenditure on healthcare, is only 31st in the life expectancy league tables of developed countries.
Each of the healthy lifestyles lowers your chances of getting one of the chronic health problems, such as heart disease and cancer—but together they have a massive synergistic effect on longevity.
On average, an American man aged 50 will live an additional 14 years, and a woman an extra 12 years, beyond their expected life expectancy at that age, say researchers from the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health.
The researchers looked at two major study groups—the Nurses' Health Study, which included more than 121,000 female nurses, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which monitored more than 44,000 men—and tracked their health and lifestyle choices over a 34-year period.
Lifestyle improvements has to be the way to go in the US, which has focused too much on drugs and treatment instead of prevention, the researchers say. As a result, the US spends the most on healthcare per capita—expenditure is $9,402 per person each year—in the world, and yet has left the US languishing in the life expectancy league tables.
Healthier lifestyles would reduce the rate of premature death from heart disease by 75 per cent, and cancer deaths by 50 per cent, the researchers estimate.
(Source: Circulation, 2018; doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.032047)
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