Four Health Changes Can Prolong Life 14 Years
By Michael Kahn
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
People who drink moderately, exercise, quit smoking and eat five servings of
fruit and vegetables each day live on average 14 years longer than people who
adopt none of these behaviors, researchers said on Tuesday.
Overwhelming evidence has shown that these things contribute to healthier
and longer lives, but the new study actually quantified their combined impact,
the British team said.
"These results may provide further support for the idea that even small
differences in lifestyle may make a big difference to health in the population
and encourage behavior change," the researchers wrote in the journal PLoS
Medicine.
Between 1993 and 1997 the researchers questioned 20,000 healthy British men
and women about their lifestyles. They also tested every participant's blood to
measure vitamin C intake, an indicator of how much fruit and vegetables people
ate.
Then they assigned the participants--aged 45-79--a score of between 0
and 4, giving one point for each of the healthy behaviors.
After allowing for age and other factors that could affect the likelihood of
dying, the researchers determined that people with a score of 0 were four times
as likely to have died, particularly from cardiovascular disease.
The researchers, who tracked deaths among the participants until 2006, also
said a person with a health score of 0 had the same risk of dying as someone
with a health score of 4 who was 14 years older.
The lifestyle change with the biggest benefit was giving up smoking, which
led to an 80 percent improvement in health, the study found. This was followed
by eating fruits and vegetables.
Moderate drinking and keeping active brought the same benefits, Kay-Tee Khaw
and colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council
said.
"Armed with this information, public-health officials should now be in
a better position to encourage behavior changes likely to improve the health of
middle-aged and older people," the researchers wrote.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Will Dunham and Jon Boyle)
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