Four lifestyle changes keep you living longer
A British study has now confirmed specifically that people who drink moderately, exercise, stop smoking, and eat five servings of fruit and vegetables each day live an average 14 years longer than people who don’t follow that regime.
The study involved 20,000 healthy British men and women being questioned about their lifestyle between 1993 and 1997. Tests were also done on every participant’s blood to measure vitamin C intake as an indicator of how many fruit and vegetables were consumed.
The participants, aged 45 to 79, were then given a score of between zero and four with one point for each of the healthy behaviours. After allowing for age and other factors that could affect the likelihood of dying, the researchers determined that the people with a score of zero were four times as likely to have died.
It was established that a person with a health score of zero – with minimum levels of good healthy behaviour – had the same risk of dying as someone 14 years older but with a good healthy habit score of four.
The British researchers wrote in the journal PLoS Medicine that “these results may provide further support for the idea that even small differences in lifestyle may make a big difference to health in the population and encourage behaviour change”.
