Study finds four healthy habits can mean 14 extra years of life The Associated Press
LONDON — To get an extra 14 years of life, don’t smoke, eat lots of fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly and drink alcohol in moderation. That’s the finding of a study that tracked about 20,000 people in the United Kingdom. Kay-Tee Khaw of the University of Cambridge and colleagues calculated that people who adopted these four healthy habits lived an average of 14 years longer than those who didn’t. “We’ve known for a long time that these behaviors are good things to do, but we’ve never seen these additive benefits before,” said Susan Jebb, head of Nutrition and Health at Britain’s Medical Research Council, which helped pay for the study. “Just doing one of these behaviors helps, but every step you make to improve your health seems to have an added benefit,” said Jebb, who was not involved in the study. The benefits were also seen regardless of whether or not people were fat and what social class they came from. The findings were published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal. The study included healthy adults aged 45 to 79. Participants filled in a health questionnaire between 1993 and 1997 and nurses conducted a medical exam at a clinic. Participants scored a point each for not smoking, regular physical activity, eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and moderate alcohol intake. Until 2006, the researchers tracked deaths from all causes, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and respiratory diseases. People who scored four points were four times less likely to die than those who scored zero, the research showed. Khaw said that the study should convince people that improving their health does not always require extreme changes to their lifestyles. “We didn’t ask these people to do anything exceptional,” Khaw said. “We measured normal behaviors that were entirely feasible within people’s normal, everyday lives.”
As a child I ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but wasent overweight because, I WAS ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
As a child I ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but wasent overweight because, I WAS ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
I and everyone else ate everything that TODAY they say is not good for us AND we played outside. Some of us were thin and some of us were down right fat! And I look at the really older generation who ate even worse than me and they are living to be in their 80's and 90's AND some of them still smoke and live on nothing but sweets and soda!! Go figure! Everything in moderation!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler