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Americans Could Live Up to 14 Years Longer By Doing These 5 Things

Not only that, but these good habits also lead to more healthy years

By American Heart Association News

(This article ran previously on the website of the American Heart Association.)

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Credit: Adobe Stock

Americans don’t live as long as people in most other high-income countries, but modest lifestyle changes could increase their lifespan by as much as 14 years, according to a new study.

The study, published April 30 in the American Heart Association journal Circulationexamined how lifestyle factors like regular physical activity, not smoking, moderate drinking and a healthy weight and diet might raise life expectancy among Americans. Although the U.S. is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, it ranks 53rd in the world for life expectancy at birth, according to 2015 data from the World Health Organization.

More Than 100,000 Patients

Researchers at Harvard University studied data from 123,219 patients compiled during a 34-year period in the Nurses’ Health Study and 28 years of the Professionals Follow-up Study.

They then focused on patients with five “low-risk lifestyle factors:”

  1. Never smoking
  2. Exercising for 30 minutes a day at a moderate to vigorous level (including brisk walking)
  3. Having a normal body mass index
  4. Eating a healthy diet, and
  5. Consuming a moderate level of alcohol, defined as no more than one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men

The researchers found that 50-year-old women who engaged in all five low-risk factors lived an average age of 93.1 years — 14 years longer than women who adopted none of the lifestyle factors. Men at age 50 who adopted all five factors lived to an average age of 87.6, or 12.2 years longer than men who had none of the five low-risk factors.

“If more Americans adopted healthy lifestyles, it could have quite a big impact on life expectancy,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Yanping Li, a research scientist at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Americans put a high priority on health care, but our findings support the idea that we should be putting more effort on prevention than on treatment,” she said.

Smoking Down, Obesity Up

The average lifespan has been steadily increasing in the U.S., from 62.9 years in 1940 to 76.8 years in 2000 to 78.8 years in 2014, a rise attributed partly to a steady decrease in smoking. In 1965, 42 percent of U.S. adults smoked. By 2014, the percentage had dropped to 16.8 percent.

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Yet Li said life expectancy rates should have risen even higher due to smoking cessation rates, but they were counterbalanced by the high rate of people with poor diets and sedentary lifestyles. “It’s a key point, because obesity prevalence keeps increasing in America,” she said.

Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, pointed out that the study didn’t delve into how socioeconomic factors often influence unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as heavy drinking.

“But even with its limitations, this paper is incredibly important. It’s an elegant analysis of the potential influence of lifestyle, not only on cardiovascular disease, but on other major causes of death,” he said.

How to Make the Changes?

Lloyd-Jones, who was not involved in the study, said he’d like to see future research that pinpoints the best ways to get people to adopt the five low-risk lifestyle factors that were examined in the study.

“Behavior change is one of the hardest things for adults to accomplish,” he said. “Most of us have had the experience where it’s relatively easy to lose 10 pounds, and then it comes right back. We need to find ways to help people adopt changes for the long haul.”

The new findings show that taking small steps — like a brisk 30-minute walk five times a week — can add up to a longer “healthspan,” a term which describes how long people are healthy, not just how long they live, Lloyd-Jones said.

“What encouraged me the most about this data is it does not take perfection to be healthy,” he said. “These were not people who were running marathons or adopting vegan diets. You just need to adopt small goals — like eating more fruits and vegetables — achieve them, and move on to another step. Even modest changes can have a big impact in the long-term.”

By American Heart Association News

The American Heart Association is the nation's oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. Founded by six cardiologists in 1924, our organization now includes more than 22.5 million volunteers and supporters. We fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies, and provide critical tools and information to save and improve lives. Our nationwide organization includes 156 local offices and more than 3,000 employees. We moved our national headquarters from New York to Dallas in 1975 to be more centrally located. The American Stroke Association was created as a division in 1997 to bring together the organization's stroke-related activities.

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