Want to live a longer life? Research says you should do these five things.

By Jae Berman

August 21

There seems to always be a mad dash toward the next new thing when it comes to nutrition and fitness — whether it's the latest exercise craze, superfood or diet regimen. But leaping from fad to fad isn't exactly a well-reasoned strategy for improving our health. Nor is it a way to create changes that stick — which are the only ones that will have an impact.

If we're going to generate enough motivation to create sustainable change, we need to have clear objectives and understand how and why our habits fulfill those objectives. That way, when relapses or difficult moments arise — and they always do — our deeper motivation and plan keep us anchored.

If your objective is to live a longer, healthier life, a new study conducted by Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health lays out five practices, none of which needs to involve a fad.

Menopause can be unsettling. These habits can help smooth the transition.

The study, which appeared in the American Heart Association's journal, Circulation, analyzed data on more than 100,000 people, who were followed for up to 34 years. Researchers looked at life expectancy among those who engaged in five "low-risk lifestyle factors," such as not smoking. The researchers concluded that, if practiced together, the five low-risk lifestyle factors could increase life span quite significantly, an average of 14 years for women and 12 years for men.

The five low-risk factors are the following:

1. Avoid smoking. Low risk is defined as never smoking.

2. Maintain a healthy weight. Low risk is defined as a Body Mass Index in the range of 18.5 to 24.9. BMI is a ratio of weight to height that, though imperfect, offers a quick and easy assessment of weight status.

3. Exercise regularly. Low risk is defined as moderate- or vigorous-intensity exercise for 30 or more minutes a day.

4. Consume moderate amounts of alcohol. Low risk is defined as one-half to one drink per day for women and one-half to two drinks per day for men.

5. Maintain an overall healthy diet. Low risk is defined as a diet with high intakes of vegetables, fruit, nuts, whole grains, polyunsaturated fatty acids and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, and low intakes of red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fat, and sodium. 

Not only is the research topic compelling because of the large participant sample size and lengthy follow-up — documenting 42,167 deaths over 34 years — but also because it's specifically focused on the outcome of lifespan. People make lifestyle choices for many reasons, but focusing on these five components can support someone who wants to increase their life expectancy.

"This study underscores the importance of following healthy lifestyle habits for improving longevity in the U.S. population," said Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School and senior author, in a news release that accompanied the study.

"However, adherence to healthy lifestyle habits is very low. Therefore, public policies should put more emphasis on creating healthy food . . . and social environments to support and promote a healthy diet and lifestyles."

While public policy may change in the future, there are steps you can take now to implement change.

Begin by taking an honest look and assess how you score among these five parameters. For example, you don't smoke, you exercise regularly, but you drink more than two drinks a day, your BMI is elevated and your diet isn't always healthy. Or you're low-risk for everything, but you only exercise two days a week. Be super specific. Note where you're doing well and where you're really struggling.

Once you get an idea of where you stand, choose just one area you want to focus on and one change you want to make in it. It's common for us to jump in and try to fix everything at once, but success usually occurs through setting small, clearly defined goals and achieving them one by one. For example, if you know you're drinking more than is recommended, but you don't want to decrease intake right now, choose a different first step. Here are some first-step suggestions:

• If decreasing alcohol consumption is your focus, consider cutting out drinking at home. Or if social drinking is your main issue, set a goal for drinks per week to keep you accountable.

• If quitting smoking is your goal, perhaps the first step is to research smoking-cessation programs.

• If improving your diet interests you, start with adding one more vegetable and fruit to your daily diet.

• If exercise is your priority, add one 30-minute workout to your regimen to get you toward a daily routine.• If losing weight is your focus, consider decreasing caloric intake by 250 to 500 calories per day.

Check in weekly to stay accountable. As that habit is incorporated into your regular routine, add more to your weekly agenda, so that slowly, but surely, you're incorporating the five habits.

When bumps in the road occur, remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing. You're taking steps to create habits that could lead to a longer, healthier life. That focus is an important part of achieving the goal. 

Berman is a registered dietitian, a personal trainer and owner of Jae Berman Nutrition.

A New Study Says Any Amount of Drinking Is Bad for You. Here's What Experts Say

A new study concludes there’s no amount of alcohol consumption that’s safe for overall health — a finding that’s likely to surprise moderate drinkers, and that has left some experts unconvinced.

For years, public health officials have said that, while no one should pick up drinking in search of better health, moderate drinking (defined as up to a drink per day for women and up to two per day for men) probably won’t hurt anyone who already imbibes, and may even confer some benefits. This standard is written into the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and is supported by organizations including the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society.

But the new paper, published Thursday in The Lancet, calls that long-held conclusion into question.

“The evidence is adding up that no amount of drinking is safe,” says study co-author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of global health and health metrics sciences at the University of Washington. “I don’t think we’re going out on a limb to say anything that the data do not support.”

The new research was based on a review of nearly 700 existing studies on global drinking prevalence and nearly 600 studies on alcohol and health and found that alcohol was the seventh leading risk factor for premature death in 2016, contributing to 2.8 million deaths worldwide. That number is equivalent to 2.2% of all female deaths and 6.8% of all male deaths that year, according to the study.

The health risks likely only increase the more you drink, the study found. Compared to non-drinkers, people who had one alcoholic beverage per day had a 0.5% higher risk of developing one of 23 alcohol-related health problems, including cancer, road injuries, and tuberculosis, in a given year, the study says. At that level, the absolute increase is small, equaling only four additional deaths per 100,000 people per year, according to the study. But those who had two drinks per day had a risk 7% higher than non-drinkers. At five drinks per day, the risk was 37% higher, the study says.

Gakidou’s paper did show some modest cardiovascular benefits associated with moderate drinking, particularly among women, but she says that effect is overshadowed by the numerous ways alcohol can threaten health. When you consider risks like breast cancer and road traffic injuries, she says, “the protective effect goes away, even at low doses.”

Other experts have recently come to similar conclusions. In May, for example, the World Cancer Research Fund released a report saying that, at least in terms of cancer prevention, “it’s best not to drink alcohol.” The U.K. government made a similar recommendation in 2016.

Meanwhile, some studies have questioned the long-standing idea that moderate drinking is good for heart health. That’s in part because some older studies didn’t account for the fact that many people who don’t drink abstain either because they had addiction issues in the past, or have other health problems that force them to stay away from alcohol. Including these individuals in the general non-drinking population may have skewed research results to make teetotalers as a whole group look unhealthier than they actually are, some studies have suggested.

Walter Willett, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, questions the conclusion that the cons of drinking always outweigh the pros. While there’s “no question” that heavy drinking is harmful, he says that plenty of data supports links between moderate drinking and lower total mortality and a decreased risk of heart disease — which, he says, are far more relevant concerns for most Americans than something like tuberculosis, which the Lancet paper identifies as a leading alcohol-related disease worldwide. Tuberculosis is very rare in the U.S.

“Our decisions about drinking in the United States shouldn’t be influenced by what alcohol does to tuberculosis,” Willett says. “When you throw together everything in one big pot and draw conclusions for the whole world, it’s just misleading.”

Willett does acknowledge that even moderate drinking comes with tradeoffs. A drink a day may decrease a woman’s risk of heart disease but increase her risk of breast cancer. For a young, healthy woman who is unlikely to die of heart disease, those risks might outweigh the benefits. But that’s a decision that woman would have to make with her doctor, Willett says — and it’s unlikely the entire population would or should come to the same conclusion.

“I think they went too far in this paper,” Willett says. “There are risks and benefits, and I think it’s important to have the best information about all of those and come to some personal decisions and engage one’s health care provider in that process as well.”

Gakidou, on the other hand, says her paper’s recommendation is valid precisely because individual health decisions are so variable.

“We don’t have the information for specific individuals…we’re making overall recommendations at the population level,” she says. “If you’re running a health system in a country, it’s better overall for the population of your country to not drink at all than to drink a little bit.”

Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, agrees with that assessment. It’s clear, he says, that drinking comes with health risks, and far less clear that it comes with any benefits. So while some moderate drinkers might never experience health problems from drinking, “if you look at all the risks and all the benefits of alcohol, it’s probably net harmful, on average, for the whole population,” he says.

While that conclusion may seem stark to people who have come to feel virtuous about their nightly glass of wine, Mozaffarian says it’s actually not so different from current medical advice.