A research by the American Heart Association suggests that if people follow five healthy lifestyle habits they can prolong their lives more than 14 years in the case of women and 12 in men.
The study, published on Monday in the specialized journal Circulation, recommends following these five habits: never smoke, maintain a healthy body mass index, exercise moderately, not drink a lot of alcohol and have a healthy diet.
Those who followed these five practices at 50 years lived an average of 14 years more, in the case of women, and 12.2 years more in the case of men, compared to those who did not meet any of them.
Specifically, those who did follow these habits were 74% less likely to die during the follow-up period; 82 percent less likely to die of cardiovascular disease and 65 percent less likely to die of cancer.
"Quantifying the association between factors of healthy lifestyle and longer life expectancy is important not only for individual behavioral changes, but also for health communicators and policy makers," said lead author Frank Hu, MD in Medicine, from the Department of Nutrition at Harvard in Boston (USA).
For the researcher, "it is fundamental" to put prevention in the first place through changes in diet and lifestyle, which he said "has enormous benefits in terms of reducing the appearance of chronic diseases, improving life expectancy and reducing the costs of medical care. "
Between 1940 and 2014, the life expectancy of Americans increased from around 63 years to almost 79 years.
However, researchers believe that the improvement in life expectancy would be even greater without the widespread prevalence of obesity, a known risk factor for heart disease, stroke and premature death.
To carry out the report, they analyzed the link between the five lifestyle factors and premature death using data from the National Nurses' Health Study and the Follow-up Study of Health Professionals, which included more than 122,000 people.
The researchers also used statistics from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, with data from more than 2,000 people between 50 and 80 years, to estimate the distribution of those lifestyle factors among adults in the United States.
Finally, they studied adult mortality rates using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database.
In 2014, the projected life expectancy at 50 years was 33.3 years more for women and 29.8 more for men.
Among adults who said they had adopted the five healthy lifestyle habits, however, Hu and his colleagues found that females lived an additional 43.1 years and that men did 37.6 more years.
Those who did not live in a healthy way, on the other hand, lived on average only 29 additional years in the case of women and 25.5 years in the case of men.