Golden rules to extend life up to 14 years: Check now
New Delhi : Life is beautiful and most of us desire for a happy long life. Experts say that there are certain rules to increase the youthful longevity and following them can add 14 years in the lifeline.
Researchers in United States have come up with some straightforward lifestyle steps which can result in the addition of 14 years to the life of a woman aged 50 and 12 years for a man.
The five golden rules for prolonged happy life include- no smoking, regular exercise, healthy diet, healthy body weight and moderate alcohol drinking. These five rules that can help to extend our lives by more than a decade, reports the Daily Mail.
Researchers have used 34 years of data from women and 27 years of data from men involved in two large national US health surveys. Those participants who have followed all five steps were 74 % less likely to die during this period than members who didn't maintain any of the lifestyle habits.
The study also mentioned that the death rate of active participants was much lower for heart disease, stroke and cancer.
Author Frank Hu, of Harvard's T H Chan School of Public Health, said: 'It is critical to put prevention first.
"Prevention, through diet and lifestyle modifications, has enormous benefits in terms of reducing occurrence of chronic diseases, improving life expectancy as shown in this study, and reducing healthcare costs."
According to the study, those who followed the five golden steps were 82 % less likely to die from cardiovascular disease.
Also, the analysis shows that the risk of dying from cancer also decreased by almost two-thirds.
As far as diet is concerned, it has long been considered as the key factor in healthy living.
Study shows that Mediterranean diet which is high in fresh vegetables, fruit, whole grains, olive oil and fish can help ward off heart problems and cancer.
Regular exercise has been defined as at least half an hour vigorous activity a day.
By term healthy weight, the experts meant keeping a body mass index ranging from 18.5 to 24.9 – neither underweight nor overweight.
Moderate alcohol consumption means a medium glass of wine a day for women, and a large glass for men. Over the course of the study, researchers recorded 42,167 deaths, of which 13,953 were due to cancer and 10,689 were caused by cardiovascular disease.
Following the aforesaid lifestyle behaviours people can protect themselves from various health problem and early death.
The author of the research said: "Quantifying the association between healthy lifestyle factors and longer life expectancy is important not only for individual behavioural changes but also for health communicators and policy-makers."
The complete study and findings have been published in the Journal of American Heart Association.
