In a recent study published in BMJ, researchers found that maintaining five healthy habits—eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy body weight, not drinking too much alcohol, and not smoking—at middle-age may increase years lived free of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
This study provides strong evidence that following a healthy lifestyle can substantially extend the years a person lives disease-free.
The research is from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. One author is Yanping Li.
Previous studies have found that following a healthy lifestyle improves overall life expectancy and reduces the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, but few studies have looked at the effects of lifestyle factors on life expectancy free from such diseases.
In the study, the team looked at 34 years of data from 73,196 women and 28 years of data from 38,366 men participating in, respectively, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.
They found that women who practiced four or five of the healthy habits at age 50 lived an average of 34.4 more years free of diabetes, heart diseases, and cancer, compared to 23.7 healthy years among women who practiced none of these healthy habits.
Men practicing four or five healthy habits at age 50 lived 31.1 years free of chronic disease, compared to 23.5 years among men who practiced none.
Men who were current heavy smokers, and men and women with obesity, had the lowest disease-free life expectancy.
The team says given the high cost of chronic disease treatment, public policies to promote a healthy lifestyle by improving food and physical environments would help to reduce health care costs and improve quality of life.
If you care about wellness, please read studies about these two exercises may help protect your muscles and findings of obesity linked to abnormal bowel habits—not diet.
For more information about healthy habits and disease prevention, please see recent studies about a high-fat, high-carb diets could harm your brain super fast and results showing that even ‘low-risk’ alcohol drinking can be harmful.
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