Want to live up to an additional 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 Just add eight healthy lifestyle choices to your life at age 40 and that could happen, according to a new unpublished study analyzing data on US veterans. “There’s a 20-year period in which you can make these changes, whether you do it gradually or all at once,” said lead study author Xuan-Mai Nguyen, a health science specialist for the Million Veteran Program at the VA Boston Healthcare System. “We also did an analysis to see if we eliminated people with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, cancer and the like, does it change the outcome? And it really didn’t,” she said. “So, if you start off with chronic diseases, making changes does still help.”
What are these magical healthy habits?
Lifestyle habits build on each other
The study, presented 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.
Adding just one healthy behavior to a man’s life at age 40 provided an additional 4.5 years of life, Nguyen said.
Adding a second led to seven more years, while adopting three habits prolonged life for men by 8.6 years.
As the number of additional lifestyle changes climbed, so did the benefits for men, adding up to nearly a quarter-century of extra life.
Adopting just one healthy behavior added 3.5 years to a woman’s life. Credit: d3sign/Getty Images
Women saw huge leaps in life span as well, Nguyen said, although the numbers added up differently than for men.
Adopting just one healthy behavior added 3.5 years to a woman’s life, while two added eight years, three 12.6 years and embracing all the healthy habits extended a woman’s life by 22.6 years.
“Doing all eight had a synergistic effect, sort of an added boost to extend your life, but any small change made a difference,” Nguyen said.
After adjusting for age, body mass index, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status, education level and family income level, the study found “an 87 per cent relative reduction in all-cause mortality for those who adopted all eight lifestyle factors compared to those who adopted none,” Nguyen said.
Ranking the lifestyle choices
The study was able to rank the eight lifestyle behaviors to see which provided the biggest boost in longevity.
No. 1: First on the list was exercise, which many experts say is one of the most important behaviors anyone can do to improve their health. Adding that one healthy behavior produced a 46 per cent decrease in the risk of death from any cause when compared with those who did not exercise, Nguyen said.
“We looked at whether they did light, moderate or vigorous activity compared to not doing anything and just sitting on the couch,” Nguyen said.
“People who lived longer did 7.5 metabolic equivalent hours of exercise a week. Just to give you a baseline — if you can walk up a flight of stairs without losing your breath, that’s four minutes of the 7.5.”
No. 2: Not becoming addicted to opioids was the second most important contributor to a longer life, reducing the risk of early death by 38 per cent, the study found.
No. 3: Never using tobacco reduced risk of death by 29 per cent, the study found. If a person was a former smoker, that didn’t count: “We did that to make it as strict as we could,” Nguyen said.
No. 4: Managing stress was next, reducing early death by 22 per cent, the study found.
No. 5: Eating a plant-based diet would raise your chances of living a longer life by 21 per cent, the study found. But that doesn’t mean you have to be a 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.
No. 6: Avoiding binge-drinking — which is having more than four alcoholic beverages a day — was another healthy lifestyle habit, reducing the risk of death by 19 per cent, Nguyen said.
No. 7: Getting a good night’s sleep — defined as at least seven to nine hours a night with no insomnia — reduced early death from any cause by 18 per cent, Nguyen said.
No. 8: Being surrounded by positive social relationships helped longevity by 5 per cent, the study found. However, loneliness and isolation, especially among older adults, is becoming more widespread and worrisome, experts say.
“Five percent may seem small, but that’s still a decrease in terms of all-cause mortality,” Nguyen said.
“Every little bit helps, whether you pick physical activity or make sure you’re surrounded by positive social support.”