Healthy life 'can give you another 14 years'

By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 08/01/2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/08/nhealth108.xml

A healthy lifestyle can increase a person's lifespan by as much as 14 years, scientists have claimed.

Researchers have calculated people can extend the length of their lives by up to 17 per cent by not smoking, drinking only moderately, eating healthily and keeping physically active.
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Many studies have highlighted the health risks associated with cigarettes, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet and lack of exercise. However, few have looked at the combined effects of all four on longevity.

Prof Kay-Tee Khaw, a gerontologist at Cambridge University who led the new study, said: "There were substantial differences in mortality associated with the four health behaviours combined.

"The results strongly suggest that these four achievable lifestyle changes could have a marked improvement on the health of middle-aged and older people, which is particularly important given the ageing population in the UK and other European countries."

Prof Khaw and colleagues, whose study is published in the journal PLoS Medicine, surveyed 20,244 men and women living in Norfolk in the mid-1990s. The participants, none of whom had known cancer or heart disease, were aged between 45 and 79.

They were given a point for each of four healthy behaviours - not smoking, exercising, alcohol intake of less than 15 units per week (less than five large glasses of wine or five pints of medium-strength lager) and having vitamin C levels equivalent to eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

When in 2006 - an average of 11 years later - the researchers re-contacted those who took part, they found 1,987 had died since they were first interviewed.

Those who scored zero points, by having smoked, drank, failed to exercise and failed to eat enough fruit and vegetables, were four times more likely to have died than those who scored four points.

On this basis, the healthiest group in the study were calculated to have a lifespan that was, on average, 14 years longer than those with the least healthy lifestyle.

Those with one point - for displaying only one healthy behaviour - were 2.5 times as likely to have died than the healthiest group.

Smokers were 77 per cent more likely to have died during the study period, and low alcohol intake was associated with a 26 per cent increased chance of survival.

Being physically active and having levels of vitamin C equivalent to eating five servings of fruit and vegetables increased chances of still being alive by the end of study by 24 per cent and 44 per cent, respectively.