In 2008 the European EPIC study began to publish their results. The study followed over half a million people and follow-ups continue. However, one factor was clear from the moment that the results started coming in: your lifestyle choices have a big impact on your life expectancy. A paper published in PLoS Med placed the figure at 14 years.
In 2014, BMC Medicine published a paper that broke down the factors into life expectancy years.
| Factor | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy smoking (10 or more per day) | 9.4 years | 7.3 years |
| Smoking (less than 10 per day) | 5.3 years | 5.0 years |
| Being underweight (BMI less than 22.5) | 3.5 years | 2.1 years |
| Obesity (BMI over 30) | 3.1 years | 3.2 years |
| Heavy drinking (more than 4 drinks per day) | 3.1 years | |
| Eating processed/red meat (more than 120g per day) | 2.4 years |
What should we take from this? Nobody would contest that smoking is bad for you, so that is an easy one.
According to the data, the next biggest factor is maintaining a healthy body weight. This probably makes sense. In order to maintain a healthy body weight you have to eat sensibly and exercise, so it is not surprising that this correlates with a longer life expectancy.
Heavy drinking reduces your life expectancy. Interesting, this does not mean that you should cut out alcohol. Non-drinkers actually have the lowest life expectancy. It’s not much worse than being a heavy drinker, but nor is it an improvement. The longest life expectancy are those that drink moderately.
Finally, diet plays a factor too. The EPIC study, and other studies around the world are clear that processed meat takes years off your life. Red meat probably does too. Whether you can eat white meat and fish is less clear. Most studies seem to suggest they have little to no impact. However, the Loma Linda University study suggests that there could be measurable health benefits in being vegetarian. The NHS has published a summary. It concludes that vegetarians have a longer life expectancy, and there is some support for this in the EPIC study as well.
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Tags: diet, drinking, health, life expectancy, lifestyle, smoking
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 1st, 2016 at 10:52 am and is filed under Health & Wellbeing, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.