It seems obvious that lifestyle choices can influence how long you live. Habits such as eating right, exercising, and getting plenty of sleep seem like no-brainers for reducing the risks of developing certain diseases.
But how much do lifestyle choices like exercise or proper sleep affect how long you live? Based on a recent study, you could increase your lifespan by decades if you incorporate these habits into your life.
Exercise
Exercise can help you feel better and have more energy. The health benefits of regular physical activity are hard to ignore. Everyone benefits from it regardless of abilities, gender, or age. If you’ve stopped exercising for one reason or another, starting or restarting your fitness journey could add years to your life.
In fact, exercise is the one thing that can increase your lifespan the most. It reduces your risk factors of developing hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers. Thankfully, exercise is considered any activity that increases your heart rate. If you can discover fun activities, then it only increases your chances to make exercise a lifelong habit.
Avoid Opioid Misuse
Opioids are commonly used for treating pain. They include medicines such as morphine, fentanyl, and tramadol. Unfortunately, misuse can lead to dependency and increase your risk of an early death. If you’re using opioids for non-medical purposes or recreationally, you should seek help from a professional to overcome your addiction.
Avoid Smoking
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. In fact, overall mortality for smokers in the United States is three times higher than for those who never smoked. Smoking increases your risk of cancers, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease.
Fortunately, it’s never too late to quit smoking. Many resources, such as support groups and online resources like #CDCTips, are available. Also, your doctor is there to help and may have more resources and strategies to quit.
Managing Stress
Your body uses stress to protect you against threats from predators. Fortunately, such threats are rare today due to modern living. However, that doesn’t mean that life is stress-free. Unfortunately, modern life creates different stresses, such as paying your bills, work, and family obligations.
If not adequately managed, chronic stress can harm your mind and body. Long-term exposure to stress hormones can disrupt your body’s processes, increasing your risk of developing certain health conditions. However, you can manage stress by developing strategies, whether by yourself or with the help of a professional. You cannot eliminate all stress from your life, but you can manage it.
Eat a Healthy Diet
Consuming unhealthy foods and drinks or too much or too little of certain types of foods can lead to weight gain, obesity, and other chronic conditions.
A healthy diet includes a variety of nutrients that your body needs to work correctly. There is no one diet that must be followed to achieve ultimate health. Instead, you can choose a diet that works best for you, where you eat a variety of foods that are high in nutritional value for most meals. It’s ok to indulge in your favorite treats occasionally, but not every day.
Limit Alcohol Use
Alcohol has been a part of human civilization for thousands of years. It’s associated with social gatherings and a good time. Unfortunately, excessive alcohol use can increase your risk of developing chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, and liver disease.
Reducing or eliminating alcohol can improve your quality of life and increase your lifespan by reducing your risks of alcohol-related illnesses and risky behaviors. If you feel you have a problem with alcohol, you should seek professional help.
Prioritize Sleep
Your body needs sleep, like air to breathe and food to function. Although researchers are still unable to fully understand the biological purpose of sleep, what is known is that sleep affects almost every system in your body. Specifically, sleep helps repair and maintain your organs, mood, and metabolism.
Sleep also maintains pathways in your brain that are responsible for learning and creating new memories. It affects how well neurons communicate with each other and removes toxins that can build up while you’re awake. Without enough sleep, you can suffer a variety of negative consequences.
Ideally, you should establish a sleep schedule that includes getting enough sleep, going to bed, and waking up at about the same time every day, including on weekends.
Positive Social Relationships
Social connections can lead to a longer life and better health. Close relationships with others that you find meaningful and enjoyable provide a sense of belonging and being cared for, valued, and supported. Your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and others can significantly impact your health.
Unfortunately, social isolation and loneliness can increase your risk of certain health conditions even if you don’t feel lonely. Therefore, it’s essential to maintain and foster healthy relationships.
When you have stable and supportive relationships with others, you are more likely to make healthy choices that have positive mental and health benefits. Supportive relationships can help you cope with significant life events, stress, anxiety, and depression.
How Much Do These Habits Affect Your Life?
According to this study, incorporating all these habits into your life can increase your lifespan by over 20 years. However, adding one of these habits could add 3.5 to 4.5 years to your life, and adding two may add 7 to 8 years. Not surprisingly, some habits have a greater impact than others.
- A lack of physical activity, opioid use, and smoking can increase your risk of early death by 30% to 45%
- Stress, excessive drinking, poor diet, and improper sleep were each associated with roughly a 20% increase in a risk of early death
- A lack of positive social relationships increases your risk of early death by 5%
The Takeaway
A healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of early death and increase lifespan. It’s never too late to start. If you want to improve your health and well-being, these behaviors can help you achieve a healthier lifestyle no matter how old you are.
However, making many changes at once can be difficult. Therefore, start with one change, no matter how small, and work on it until it’s something you find yourself doing with little or no effort. Then, move on to the next goal. The more you can improve your mental and physical health, the better your overall quality of life and well-being.
FitTrend’s mission is to help you along your self-improvement journey, promote an active lifestyle, and help you achieve your goals. Our journal can help you track your workouts, weight, mood, calories, and more. Also, FitTrend allows you to connect supported gadgets to your account to make it easier for you to update your journal automatically. Create your account today and start using FitTrend for free!
Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
