Following five healthy lifestyle habits may increase life expectancy by decade or more.
Eating a healthy diet, regular exercise (at least 30 minutes or more per day of moderate to vigorous exercise), maintaining a healthy body weight, not drinking too much alcohol (up to about one 5-ounce glass of wine per day for women, or up to two glasses for men), and not smoking during adulthood may add more than a decade to life expectancy.
There was also a dose-response relationship between each individual healthy lifestyle behavior and a reduced risk of early death and the combination of all five healthy behaviors was linked with the most additional years of life.
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Women who maintained all five of these healthy habits gained, on average, 14 years of life, and men gained 12 years, compared with those who didn’t maintain healthy habits over the 30-year study period.
Those individuals that maintained the healthiest lifestyles were 82% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 65% less likely to die from cancer compared with those with the least healthy lifestyles.