Do you Want to Live a Long and Healthy Life?
Life expectancy has increased significantly over the past century, and as a result the world’s population is aging. In fact, in the US alone more than 70,000 baby boomers expected to retire every single week until 2030!
Since we haven’t worked out how to stop time yet, living longer is great news for all of us, but unfortunately it doesn’t follow that we’ll all be healthy and have good quality of life as we age.
In fact, along with the increase in the aging population, we’re also seeing a rapid increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer.
However, a 20-year study of more than 111,000 people has found that a healthy lifestyle could increase your chances of living a healthy and longer life by up to ten years for women and seven years for men. The study looked at how people could live free of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.
The Secret to Living Longer
Previous studies have shown that smoking, inactivity, poor diet and heavy alcohol consumption contribute to up to 60 per cent of premature deaths and up to 18 years’ loss in life expectancy.
This latest study however assigned a ‘healthy lifestyle score’ based on five lifestyle factors—diet, smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption, and body mass index (BMI). The good news is that you can influence these five lifestyle factors to increase your chances of living a healthy and long life. The more you are better at maintaining, the better your score.
- Healthy Diet: Eating a healthy diet means including a variety of food groups (to make sure you’re still getting all the nutrients and vitamins you need!), good portion control, eating plenty of fresh healthy foods instead of processed and packaged foods, limiting (or eliminating) unhealthy fats and sugar.
- Don’t Smoke or Quit Smoking: Obviously, it’s better if you’ve never smoked. But if you’re a smoker, the research also shows that quitting at any point in your life gives you a better shot and repairing the damage it’s done to you. So, the sooner you quit, the better.
- Do Regular Physical Activity: You should aim to do moderate to vigorous physical activity for more than 30 minutes a day. If you are not used to doing exercise, this can take some time to build up to. Check out the ‘No Excuses’ Beginners Exercise Plan to get yourself started.
- Limit Excessive Alcohol Consumption: It’s OK to have a glass of wine with dinner every now and then, but we’re talking about cutting out regular and excessive consumption here. For women, try to keep your consumption below 5-15 g/day and for men below 5-30 g/day.
- Maintain a Good BMI : Your BMI, or body mass index, is a measurement that is used to assess whether you are in a healthy weight range. Unfortunately, obesity is a major limit to life expectancy. If you follow a healthy diet and do regular exercise, this should be relatively easy to maintain (all other health considerations aside). You should aim to have a body mass index of between 18.5-24.9. Check out the Heart Foundation’s BMI calculator to see where you measure up.
Living longer is only worth it if you can enjoy it! So set up some good habits and plan for health and balance in your life.
And remember, it’s OK to occasionally fall off the wagon, it happens to us all. Just remember to get up, dust yourself off, and get back on again (without any judgement)!
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