On Not Damaging Your Prospects for a Longer Life

As the publicity materials here note, it is all too easy to damage your prospects for a longer, healthy life. The potential loss of life expectancy that attends becoming sedentary, obese, or a smoker is arguably somewhat greater than any gains that might be achieved via presently available medical technologies, when used by someone who takes better care of themselves into later life. That said, it is also true that while the losses resulting from lifestyle choices are well established in many large studies, we have no idea as to the extension of human life expectancy that attends, say, the late life use of existing senolytic drugs, or mTOR inhibitors, or other approaches, alone or combined. A new study involving over 700,000 U.S. veterans reports that people who adopt eight healthy lifestyle habits by middle age can expect to live substantially longer than those with few or none of these habits. Scientists used data from medical records and questionnaires collected between 2011-2019 from 719,147 people enrolled in the Veterans Affairs Million Veteran Program. The eight habits are: being physically active, being free from opioid addiction, not smoking, managing stress, having a good diet, not regularly binge drinking, having good sleep hygiene, and having positive social relationships. According to the results, men who have all eight habits at age 40 would be predicted to live an average of 24 years longer than men with none of these habits. For women, having a...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs