Health | These eight ways can increase life expectancy – or at worst shorten it by several years

Embrace it eight healthy habits before you turn 40, and you could live more than 20 years longer than people who don’t.

This is how US researchers calculate based on data from more than 700,000 people.

The list of eight ways can add significantly more years of life even in your sixties, although the effect is not as great as for middle-aged people.

If want to live long, you should:

• to move actively

• eat healthy

• stay away from tobacco

• avoid heavy drinking

• stay away from opioids

• take care of getting enough sleep

• avoid excessive stress

• take care of social relationships.

Very the biggest effect on life expectancy is exercise, opioid use and smoking.

Lack of exercise, opioid use and smoking were linked to a 30-45 percent higher risk of death.

Stress, movement, poor diet and poor sleep each increased the risk of death by about 20 percent. A lack of good relationships was linked to a five percent increased risk of death.

“We were really surprised by how much can be achieved by adopting one, two, three or all eight lifestyle factors,” says a medical student working for the US Veterans Administration Xuan-Mai T. Nguyen Nutritionists of the United States in the bulletin.

Nguyen introduced results At the Nutrition 2023 conference at the end of July. The research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

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“It’s never too late to start a healthy lifestyle.”

Researchers reviewed the health records of more than 700,000 people who served in the US military.

The veterans were between 40 and 99 years old, and they responded to a survey that surveyed lifestyles between 2011 and 2019. In addition, the researchers analyzed the health data of the participants.

During the follow-up period of the study, more than 33,000 participants died.

Men who follow the eight healthy lifestyle habits by age 40 are predicted to live nearly 24 years longer than those who follow none of the habits.

For women, the prognosis is slightly less than this.

Getting your lifestyle in order is clearly beneficial later on as well.

“It’s never too late to start a healthy lifestyle,” says Nguyen in the release.

Lifestyles the effect on life expectancy has previously been calculated in Finland as well.

Life expectancy decreases the most in men aged 30 smoking and diabetessays THL of the Institute of Health and Welfare research from 2020. In it, the risk factors are classified in a slightly different way than in the US study.

Also in THL’s study, lack of exercise and intense stress shortened expected life years.