INCREASING LONGEVITY CAN YOU MODIFY BEHAVIOR AND THINGS YOU DO TO LIVE LONGER INCREASE LONGEVITY MEDICAL STUDIES SAY YES

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What increases longevity? Are there modifiable behaviors that you can do to increase longevity. Ponce De Leon sought the fountain of youth and millions of others have searched for the answer to longevity. Maybe Ponce should just have gone on a diet and watched his blood pressure. Can you live longer by doing things even when you are middle age or older? The answer is yes you can increase longevity. At least if you look at some medical studies. Researchers in a report of what determines longevity in men wanted to know about non genetic determinants of exceptional longevity. What besides your genes determines longevity? They also wanted to know could people live long and still function at a high level. They looked at factors associated with longevity of 90 or older.

















A study in Archives of Internal Medicine reported that men who exercise, are the right weight and do not smoke during retirement increase their chances of living for another 25 years. Modifiable healthy behaviors during early elderly years, including smoking abstinence, weight management, blood pressure control, and regular exercise, are associated not only with increased longevity in men but also with good health and function during older age. The chances of reaching 90 were surprisingly dependent on behavior from age 70 onwards. They examined modifiable factors associated with a life span of 90 or more years and late-life function in men.




Dr Laurel Yates and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center carried out the research. The study is an analysis of data collected for a larger cohort study called the Physician’s Health Study (PHS). A cohort is a group of people who share a common characteristic or experience within a defined period (e.g., are born, leave school, lose their job, are exposed to a drug or a vaccine, etc.). In this study of longevity, the researchers used the data from 2,350 men from the PHS study. Those who were included were born on or before December 31 1915, didn’t have any serious life threatening diseases and had the potential to live to or beyond 90 years during a 25-year follow-up. They were around 70 years old at the start of the study.



Men who smoked at the start of the study had only a 25% chance of living to 90 years old. Smoking or being overweight was associated with worse physical ability, while moderate, vigorous exercise was associated with better physical ability. Having a combination of different adverse effects at enrollment reduced the probability of survival even further, e.g. someone who was sedentary, with high blood pressure and diabetes had a 19% chance of surviving to 90 years old, while someone with all five risk factors had only a 4% chance of still being alive 20 years later.

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