Healthy habits can extend life by 8 years

Regular exercise and quitting smoking have a positive effect on life expectancy. Even if a person has some chronic disease.

Quitting smoking and regular physical activity can increase life expectancy by 6-8 years even in those people who suffer from chronic diseases. Quitting smoking is associated with the most significant health benefits. In the second place in this ranking is physical activity, followed by a healthy diet and abstinence from alcoholic beverages. This was the conclusion reached by scientists from the University of Leicester who assessed the health and lifestyle of 480,000 British adults.

All of them were observed for at least 6 years. They were evaluated for the presence of 36 chronic disorders, determining how a healthy lifestyle affects its duration. Diseases that cause long-term physical or mental damage were called chronic. These included cancer, senile dementia, asthma, diabetes, heart failure and anxiety disorders. The researchers determined how often people exercised, drank alcohol, how much they smoked, and what they ate before assessing their overall health.

Ethnic origin, employment status, and body mass index were also taken into account. In men with two or more chronic disorders, strict adherence to a healthy lifestyle increased its duration by 6.3 years. Individual components of this image made it possible to extend life by 4.5 years, and very healthy women could increase their life by 7.6 years.