When researching longevity, many studies look at what factors help us to live longer. However, many people live longer but have chronic health issues that can make life miserable. So I was interested to see this study which looked at how a healthy lifestyle adds on years of living without chronic disease, compared to a life with it.

Dr. JoAnn Manson, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, discussed a recent report on the American Heart Association's (AHA) Life's Essential 8 metric and its association with life expectancy and health span. This study included over 135,000 UK adults.

The AHA metric includes 8 factors:

not smoking,

regular physical activity,

healthy weight,

healthy diet,

healthy sleep,

blood pressure,

blood glucose,

and non-HDL cholesterol in healthy ranges.

The study found that men with high cardiovascular health scores tended to have an additional 7 years of life expectancy free of chronic disease (compared to those with a low score), women gained 9.5 years of healthy life. The gain in life expectancy free of chronic disease was similar across all socioeconomic strata.

A healthy lifestyle is gaining more and more validity even in the medical profession which has tended to dismiss its importance in favour of pharmaceuticals. However, they are not mutually exclusive.

Wider benefits

We know that these 8 factors are associated with better cardiovascular health, which is still the number one killer in western society.

However, everything is connected, and these same factors are also associated with better brain health, lower rates of Alzheimer's, and at least some cancers as well.

What benefits your heart is likely to also benefit your brain, bones, blood, nervous system and your whole body. Each area might benefit from other specific factors as well, but the whole body is connected and not divided up into little bits, although the medical profession tends to do so in order to specialise.

And another important point is that even moderate improvement in any of these areas is helpful. So just because you have high blood pressure or cholesterol, and have resorted to medications to bring them under control, doesn’t mean you throw it all out and give up. Going from no exercise to 10 minutes a day has a positive effect. Adding some more vegetables into your diet has a positive effect. Giving up smoking has a positive effect from the day after you do it, no matter what age that is.

None of us wants to live to 100 and spend 15 years incapacitated or with dementia or needing constant medical intervention. We now know for sure (although it really was common sense) that having a healthy lifestyle can give us more quality AND quantity of life.