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Do you want to live another 24 years? Just add eight healthy lifestyle choices to your life at age 40 and that could happen, according to a new unpublished study analyzing data on US veterans.
Start at age 50 instead? No problem, you could extend your life by as much as 21 years, the study found. 60 years old? You still gain almost 18 years if you adopt all eight healthy habits.
“There’s a 20-year window where you can make these changes, whether you do it gradually or all at once,” said lead study author Xuan-Mai Nguyen, a health sciences specialist for the VA Boston Healthcare System’s Million Veteran Program.
“We also did an analysis to see if we eliminated people with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, cancer and so on, does this change the outcome? And it really didn’t,” she said. “So when you start with chronic illness, it still helps to make changes.”
What are these magical healthy habits? Nothing you haven’t heard before: Exercise, eat healthy, reduce stress, sleep well and maintain positive social relationships. On the other hand, don’t smoke, drink too much, or get addicted to opioids.
“The sooner the better, but even making a small change in your 40s, 50s or 60s is still beneficial,” Nguyen said. “This isn’t out of reach — this is actually something achievable for the general population.”
Lifestyles build on each other
The study, presented Monday at Nutrition 2023, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, looked at the lifestyle behaviors of nearly 720,000 military veterans between the ages of 40 and 99. All were part of the Million Veteran Programa longitudinal study designed to examine the health and well-being of US veterans.
Adding just one healthy behavior to a man’s life at age 40 added an extra 4.5 years of life, Nguyen said. Adding a second led to an extra seven years, while adopting three habits extended men’s lives by 8.6 years. As the number of additional lifestyle changes increased, so did the benefits for men, amounting to nearly a quarter of a century of extra life.
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Women also saw huge jumps in longevity, Nguyen said, though the numbers added up differently than for men. Adopting just one healthy behavior added 3.5 years to a woman’s life, while two years added to eight years, three added 12.6 years, and embracing all healthy habits extended a woman’s life by 22.6 years.
“Doing all eight had a synergistic effect, kind of an extra boost to extend your life, but every little change made a difference,” Nguyen said.
After adjusting for age, body mass index, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status, education level and household income, the study found “an 87% relative reduction in all-cause mortality for those who adopted all eight lifestyle factors compared to those who did not adopt,” Nguyen said.
“A major strength of this analysis was that the population was highly diverse by race, ethnicity and SES[socioeconomic status],” said senior study author and leading nutrition researcher Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The study was only able to show an association, not direct cause and effect, and because it focused on veterans, the findings cannot be translated to all Americans. However, veterans in the study were “retired and not on active duty or attending military training,” Nguyen said. “Still, the numbers don’t necessarily translate directly to a general population one-to-one.”
Ranking the lifestyle choices
The study was able to rank the eight lifestyle behaviors to see which provided the greatest longevity boost.
No. 1: First on the list was exercise, and there were many experts say is one of the most important behaviors a person can do to improve their health. Adding in that one healthy behavior reduced the risk of death from any cause by 46% compared to those who didn’t exercise, Nguyen said.
“We looked at whether they were doing light, moderate or vigorous activity compared to doing nothing and just sitting on the couch,” Nguyen said. “People who lived longer did 7.5 metabolic equivalent hours of exercise per week. To give you a baseline, if you can walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath, that’s four minutes out of 7.5.”
That finding mirrors the results of other studies which show that you don’t have to do extreme sports to get it health benefits of exercisealthough more vigorous activities that make you lose your breath his best.
Read: Sign up for CNN’s Fitness, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide helps you get into a healthy routine, backed by experts.
No. 2: Not becoming addicted to opioids was the second most important contributor to longer life, reducing the risk of premature death by 38%, the study found. That’s a major concern today, with the US opioid crisis a national “public health emergency.” an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services reported.
No. 3: Never using tobacco reduced the risk of death by 29%, the study found. If a person was a former smoker, that didn’t count: “We did that to make it as strict as possible,” Nguyen said. However, quit smoking brings great health benefits at any point in life, experts say.
Number 4: Deal with stress was next, reducing early death by 22%, the study found. Stress is rampant in the US these days, with devastating health consequences, experts say. And there are ways to refresh your view and turn bad stress into good stress.
Read: Sign up for the Stress, but less from CNN newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide informs and inspires you to reduce stress as you learn how to harness it.
No. 5: Food vegetable diet would increase your chances of living longer by 21%, the study found. But that doesn’t mean you have to be vegetarian or vegan, Nguyen said. Following a healthy plant-based plan, such as the Mediterranean diet full of whole grains and leafy green vegetables, was key.
Read: Sign up for CNN’s Eat, But Better: Mediterranean Style. Our eight-part guide shows you a delicious, expert-backed eating lifestyle that will boost your health for life.
No. 6: avoid binge drinking — that’s drinking more than four alcoholic drinks a day — was another healthy lifestyle, which reduced the risk of death by 19%, Nguyen said. Binge drinking is emerging in the US, and it is not just students. Even moderate drinkers are at risk, studies say.
In addition, other studies have found that each amount of drink can be unhealthy, except maybe, for heart attacks and strokes, and even that finding has been challenged. A study even found one drink can trigger an irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation.
No. 7: Get one good night – defined as at least seven to nine hours a night without insomnia — reduced early death from any cause by 18%, Nguyen said. Dozens of studies are linked bad sleep to all sorts poor health outcomesincluding premature death.
Read: Sign up for CNN’s Sleep, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide contains useful tips for sleeping better.
No. 8: being surrounded by positive social relationships helped longevity by 5%, the study found. But mostly loneliness and isolation among older adultsis becoming more and more widespread and worrisomeexperts say.
“Five percent may seem small, but that’s still a drop in terms of all-cause mortality,” Nguyen said. “Every little bit helps, whether you choose physical activity or make sure you’re surrounded by positive social support.”
A recent study found that people who experienced social isolation had a 32% higher risk of dying early from any cause compared to those who were not socially isolated. Participants who reported feeling lonely were 14% more likely to die early than those who did not.
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