You can do more for your health. And it’s not that hard.
Eat healthy foods. Exercise regularly. Do not smoke. We hear these instructions from doctors, friends, parents, and strangers on the internet so often that the words start to lose their impact. And let us face it, healthy habits are hard to adhere to. But perhaps if there is proof they work, then they might be easier to swallow.
In a study in the journal ‘Circulation’, researchers studied five lifestyle factors that influence how long humans live. They calculated that people who adhered to five things: drink no more than one glass of alcohol per day (two for men), maintain a healthy body weight, eat a high-quality diet, abstain from smoking, and exercise at a moderate-to-vigorous pace (think a brisk walk, at least) for 30 minutes or more a day; had a greater chance of living longer past age 50. Women who followed all five practices lived 14 years longer, on average, than peers who did not adhere to any of them. Men lived 12 years longer under the same conditions.
First, a high-five
We are generally doing a pretty good job of staying alive. Epidemiologists often judge life expectancy as the number of years you live after you reach the age of 50. Prior to that, deaths are often from diseases not associated with getting older like accidents or chronic illnesses such as cancer.
Access to healthcare is a known factor that contributes to prolonged health, infectious disease prevention, and chronic disease prevention as well as its management. We can however get closer to the higher lifespans we yearn for by making certain changes in our lifestyles.
Let us look at these factors:
A healthy weight
To understand the influence of weight, researchers focused on people’s body mass index, or BMI. That number is a comparison of a person’s height and their weight. You can calculate your own by dividing your weight by your height squared. BMI can be tricky, though.
Doctors use it to get a rough estimate of body fat, but for any one individual person, it can be fairly inaccurate. What the researchers found was not incredibly surprising. People with BMIs between 18.5 and 22.9 had a higher chance of living longer than those who had BMIs outside that range. Research shows that losing just 5 to 10 percent of your body weight can significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. More weight loss can lead to an even better health and higher lifespan – up to a point. “Being too thin can be detrimental to your health as well. For example, not having enough fat can prevent the movement of hormones throughout the body. That’s why it’s important to work with a doctor when attempting major weight loss”.
Moderate alcohol consumption
The researchers also found that people who consumed a moderate amount of alcohol had a better chance of living longer than those who were heavy drinkers. They defined moderate alcohol consumption as 5 to 15 grams per day for women and 5 to 30 grams per day for men.
The available evidence around moderate drinking is tricky. Researchers have solid evidence to say that heavy drinking can absolutely be detrimental to your health. But the line between moderate drinking and abstaining from alcohol altogether is fuzzy. Whether people who moderately drink fare better than people who abstain is even murkier. For now, it is safe to say that moderate drinking will not cause you severe harm.
A high-quality diet
There are good research works to show that poor diets have a direct influence on various factors like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and body weight. To date, the best diet to follow is probably the Mediterranean diet. If you focus on eating a variety of whole, unprocessed foods most of the time, you are doing great things for your health. Just find a nutritional plan you can stick to – enjoying unhealthy things occasionally in moderation is much better than periodically failing hard at your strict diet.
Not smoking
We used to think smoking was benign, or even good for us; thanks to tobacco lobby! Previously, doctors smoked and often recommended cigarettes to their patients to reduce stress or lose weight. But those days are long over. Solid evidence shows smoking significantly increases your chances of lung cancer as well as other lung and heart diseases. Let us not ever reverse that. If you want to live longer and you are still smoking or vaping [shisha], do whatever you can to stop.
Exercise daily
In the study, researchers found that those who exercised for at least 30 minutes a day at a moderate to vigorous pace (including brisk walking) were in the lowest-risk group for developing certain diseases later in life, and thus they had the potential to live longer.
Exercise does two main things: it boosts metabolism and contributes to weight loss or weight stability. Those two factors significantly increase your chances of living longer. But researchers are finding a whole bunch of other things that happen in your body when you exercise, like the creation of new heart cells and an increase in bone strength. One recent study suggests that even if you have a family history of heart disease, exercise can reduce your risk. Working out can boost your mood, too. Trying to remember how good you will feel after you exercise could help you get going.
Takeaway
The key takeaway from this study is that the more of these lifestyle factors people adhered to, the more likely they were to live longer after hitting 50.