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 Just add eight healthy lifestyle choices to your life at age 40 and that could happen, according to a new unpublished study analyzing data on US veterans.
Starting at age 50 instead? No problem, you could prolong your life by up to 21 years, the study found. Age 60? You’ll still gain nearly 18 years if you adopt all eight healthy habits.
“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? Nothing you haven’t heard before: Exercise, eat a healthy diet, reduce stress, sleep well and foster positive social relationships. On the flip side, don’t smoke, don’t drink too much and don’t become addicted to opioids.
“The earlier the better, but even if you only make a small change in your 40s, 50s or 60s, it still is beneficial,” Nguyen said. “This is not out of reach — this is actually something attainable for the general population.”
The study, presented Monday 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. All were part of the Million Veteran Program, a longitudinal study designed to investigate the health and wellness of US veterans.
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.
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% relative reduction in all-cause mortality for those who adopted all eight lifestyle factors compared to those who adopted none,” Nguyen said.
