Healthy lifestyle supports disease-free aging
- jennabassett
- Jan 29, 2020
- 2 min read
TUESDAY, January 14, 2020 (The BMJ) – Men and women who adopt low-risk lifestyle factors experience more disease-free years than those who do not, according to a study published in the January 8, 2020 issue of The BMJ.
Yanping Li, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues performed a prospective cohort study that measured the life expectancy free of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer in 111,562 participants (73,196 women and 38,366 men). The researchers calculated the differences in life expectancy and years lived with and without major chronic diseases in relation to five low-risk lifestyle factors: never smoking, body mass index 18.5-24.9, moderate to vigorous physical activity (≥30 minutes/day), moderate alcohol intake (women: 5-15 g/day; men 5-30 g/day), and a higher diet quality score (upper 40%).
Overall, the authors report that at age 50, the life expectancy free of diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases was 23.7 years (95% confidence interval [CI] 22.6 to 24.7) for women who did not apply low-risk lifestyle factors, while women who adopted four or five low-risk factors exhibited a disease-free life expectancy of 34.4 years (33.1 to 35.5). Men who engaged in no low-risk factors had a disease-free life expectancy of 23.5 years (22.3 to 24.7), while those who adopted four or five low-risk factors exhibited 31.1 years (29.5 to 32.5) of disease-free life expectancy.
Notably, at age 50, male heavy smokers (≥15 cigarettes/day) and obese men and women (body mass index ≥30) made up the lowest proportion (≤75%) of total life expectancy.
“Our findings suggest that promotion of a healthy lifestyle would help to reduce the healthcare burdens through lowering the risk of developing multiple chronic diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, and extending disease-free life expectancy,” note the authors.
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