Healthy Lifestyles and Life Expectancy
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As human life expectancy increases, it’s become clear we can’t just focus on simply extending the human lifespan, but rather extending our healthy lifespan (a concept now commonly referred to as “healthspan”). After all, what good is a long life when its plagued by illnesses for the final 40 years?
This study, conducted by researchers at Harvard, included over 100,000 people tracked for more than 20 years and discusses the effects that diet, exercise, smoking status, and other factors have on extending the healthspan in individuals over 50.
What is already known on this topic
Modifiable lifestyle factors including smoking, physical activity, alcohol use, body weight, and diet quality affect both total life expectancy and incidence of chronic diseases
Few studies have comprehensively examined how a combination of multiple lifestyle factors may relate to life expectancy free from the major diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer
What this study adds
A healthier lifestyle was associated with an increased total life expectancy and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes
Using data from two large cohort studies, they observed that adherence to a low risk lifestyle was associated with a longer life expectancy at age 50 free of major chronic diseases of approximately 7.6 years in men and 10 years in women compared with participants with no low risk lifestyle factors.