These factors increase your life expectancy

Harvard researchers recently examined data from approximately 73,000 U.S. nurses from the Nurses' Health Study and nearly 40,000 U.S. health professionals from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

Study participants were free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes when they were recruited.

For more than 20 years, study participants were systematically screened for new diagnoses and deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. The researchers adjusted for age, ethnicity, family medical history, and other considerations.

The low-risk lifestyle factors used to calculate the healthy lifestyle score were:

never smoking

at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily

moderate alcohol consumption

maintaining a moderate weight (defined as a BMI of less than 25)

a quality diet

According to the study, heavy smokers, defined as those who smoke 15 or more cigarettes a day; and obese men and women (defined as those with a BMI of 30 or more) were the least likely to have a disease-free life expectancy at age 50.

Source: Health and Food