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The Guardian: Healthy habits extend disease-free life ‘by up to a decade’ | 09 January 2020

BMJ: Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: prospective cohort study | 09 January 2020

Healthy habits such as moderate drinking, healthy diet, and exercising for at least 30 minutes a day could extend people’s disease-free life by up to a decade, according to new research by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

  • Researchers examined how a healthy lifestyle is related to life expectancy that is free from major chronic diseases, using data from the Nurses’ Health Study between 1980 and 2014 and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study between 1986 and 2014.
  • Researchers looked at the effect of five low-risk healthy habits on life expectancy free of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and how many more disease-free years people could expect from the age of 50.
  • Results indicated that women and men who had adopted four or five of the healthy living factors had a disease-free life expectancy at 50 years old of 34.4 and 31.1 more years, respectively, taking them to the age of 84 or 81 years without diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. This compared with just 23.7 or 23.5 for women and men that did not adopt any of the five factors.
  • Dr. Kate Allen, executive director of science and public affairs at the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), said that “[t]his new, large study further confirms our own research that having a healthy lifestyle lowers your risk of cancer and other diseases… We hope the government will be persuaded by the mounting evidence, and take bold, positive steps to protect the nation’s health.”

Original source: Li Y; Schoufour J; Wang DD; Dhana K; Pan A; Liu X; Song M; et al, ‘Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: prospective cohort study’, British Medical Journal, Vol 368, Art No l6669, 2020, 10pp
Original Title : Healthy habits extend disease-free life ‘by up to a decade’