It's Not Too Late To Live Longer

It's never to late to start extending your life.

A new study confirms that the simple steps of exercising, eating sufficient fruits and vegetables, keeping a healthy weight, and not smoking can reduce death rates 40% and cardiovascular disease events, such as stroke or heart attack, by 30%. The good news: these benefits accrued to people who didn't adopt the healthier lifestyle until middle age (link to journal abstract). The authors concluded that "people who newly adopt a healthy lifestyle in middle-age experience a prompt benefit of lower rates of cardiovascular disease and mortality."

Some of those factors are linked. A 2004 study by researchers at Northwestern found that middle aged women who increased their intake of fruits and vegetables were less likely to become obese (more here).

There is other evidence that changes you make in midlife can significantly lengthen your lifespan. A 2003 study in the UK found that -- in fruit flies, at least -- going on a restricted calorie diet in middle age significantly improved longevity -- as much as being on lifelong dietary restriction. "Fully fed" fruit flies live about 32 days, but if they are put on a diet at either 14 days or 22 days, they'll live to 50 days -- about the same as those on a diet since birth. Caloric restriction extends longevity in mice (here, and here) and monkeys.

And for humans? MIT biology professor Dr. Lenny Guarente recently told the New York Times that calorie restriction may forestall or delay diseases such as neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease or diabetes.

If you didn't exercise much earlier in life, it's not too late. In the Harvard Alumni Study, "previously sedentary men who began exercising after the age of 45 enjoyed a 24% lower death rate than their classmates who remained inactive."

And if you were (are) a smoker? People who quit at 35 live about seven years longer than smokers; even people who stop smoking at 65 live anywhere from 1.4 to 3.7 years more.

Longevity is not the sole indicator of health, of course, but people who live longer also tend to have more healthy years. Health is also tied to one's day-in, day-out happiness. So you can end up sick and grumpy, or not.

Studies show that people believe they're healthier than they really are. Take a step back, look at your diet, exercise pattern, weight, and bad habits, and adjust them! Twenty years from now you'll be glad you did.

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Where could you go to get your exercise? In Southern California, a new chain of "wellness centers," Nifty After Fifty, targets customers 45+ who have different exercise needs than people in their twenties, and who may feel out of place in a hardbody-dominated fitness club. They also provide courses in memory loss prevention and driving. Forbes notes several Boston-area equivalents, and the OC Register interviews the founder, a professor of medicine at the University of California / Irvine.