It has been reported that adding some years to our life expectancy is not even that hard! Check out the latest reports about how we can live longer.
Living longer is possible with simple changes
When we experience hunger or cravings, we have a choice to make: we can either eat foods that are known to be good for us, or we can indulge in comfort foods.
These choices can be difficult to make and are not always possible, but research shows that consuming healthier foods can have significant health benefits, especially in the long run.
A new study conducted on nearly half a million UK residents, analyzing their food intake data and health outcomes, has found that adopting a healthy diet and maintaining it can increase your life expectancy by up to a decade.
This is great news, but it’s important to note that affording a healthy diet can be a challenge for some.
The research was conducted by Lars Fadnes, a public health researcher at the University of Bergen in Norway. Fadnes and his team used data from the long-running UK Biobank study, which began in 2006, to model life expectancy for over 467,000 individuals who reported their eating habits.
The participants in a study conducted by researchers were grouped based on their eating habits, and the changes in their eating patterns were noted over time.
The researchers identified three groups – average and unhealthy eaters, and those whose diet followed the UK’s Eatwell Guide.
They also identified a fourth group that followed a diet that the researchers called the longevity diet.
After accounting for smoking, drinking, and physical activity, the researchers discovered that men and women aged 40 who made a consistent switch from unhealthy eating to following the Eatwell Guide recommendations observed a gain of approximately 9 years in life expectancy.
Moreover, those who replaced sugary drinks and processed meats with a diet rich in whole grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and moderate quantities of fish (the so-called longevity diet) observed an additional 10 years added to their life expectancy.
Smaller gains in life expectancy were observed among people who had an average diet to begin with and those who improved their eating habits later in life.
“The bigger the changes made towards healthier dietary patterns, the larger the expected gains in life expectancy are,” the team explains in their published paper.
“Unsurprisingly, predicted gains in life expectancy are lower when the dietary change is initiated at older ages, but these remain substantial.”
