Secret to Living Longer: A Little of This, A Little of That

It's no secret that you should exercise ... eat fruits and vegetables ... stop (or never start) smoking ... and drink in moderation. But do you know how many years you could add to your life if you did all four?

Would fourteen extra years get you to eat more carrots?

In a new study that looks at the combined effect of all four healthy behaviors, UK researchers found that even moderate steps in the "right" direction added those fourteen years to participant's lifespans.

The study analyzed 20,000 people and is said to be one of the first to look at the benefit of these lifestyle changes in combination.

At the start of the study, participants were given one point for each of the following:

- were not sedentary;
- drank less than seven pints of beer or fourteen glasses of wine per week;
- ate five servings of fruits or vegetables per day;
- and did not smoke.

People who scored zero -- in other words, didn't do much that was healthy -- died at four times the rate of people who scored four. They had the mortality rate of someone fourteen years older.

The most beneficial behavior was not smoking, which improved survival rates 77%. That was followed by eating fruits and vegetables (44%), moderate alcohol intake (26%), and moderate exercise (24%).

Susan Jebb of the UK's Medical Research Council told the AP that ""We've known for a long time that these behaviors are good things to do, but we've never seen these additive benefits before ... Just doing one of these behaviors helps, but every step you make to improve your health seems to have an added benefit."

The research was published in the peer-reviewd journal PLoS Medicine.

Other sources:

Science Daily

Cancer Research UK