Who is not there chasing the secret to a longer, healthier life? While miracle cures and anti-aging fads flood the market, a new study suggests that true secret to longevity may lie in something far simpler: avoiding certain risk factors by the age of 50.
Everyday lifestyle choices can have a lasting impact on health and longevity. Adding more evidence to this, a recent study published in The New England Journal Of Medicine suggests that avoiding five major risk factors for heart disease such as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity, could extend your life by over 10 years.
The large-scale study tracked over two million individuals across 39 countries, to understand how midlife health impacts long-term survival. Researchers focused on whether participants had any of these five key risk factors at age 50. They were then followed for up to 47 years, allowing scientists to make risk predictions extending up to age 90.
“These five factors account for approximately 50% of the global burden of cardiovascular diseases. Our central question was how many additional years of life are possible if these factors are absent or modified in middle age,” said the researcher Dr. Christina Magnussen, deputy director of the Department of Cardiology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
The study found that even people with no major risk factors at age 50 still had a significant lifetime risk of heart disease, 13% of women and 21% of men had it. But when all five risk factors were present, that risk jumped to 24% for women and 38% for men, and heart issues occurred 13 years earlier in women and nearly 11 years earlier in men.
The risk of death followed a similar pattern, rising from 53% to 88% in women and from 68% to 94% in men when all five risk factors were present. On average, this translated to a loss of about 14.5 years of life for women and 12 years for men.
The study also determined which lifestyle changes have the greatest impact in midlife. Controlling high blood pressure between ages 55 and 60 was shown to delay cardiovascular events by an average of 2.4 years in women and 1.2 years in men. Quitting smoking at the same age added 2.1 years of life for women and 2.4 years for men. Participants who modified all five risk factors saved an additional 5 years of life.
For anyone who thinks it is too late to take control of their health, this study offers a hopeful wake-up call, suggests Dr. Holger Thiele, president of the German Society of Cardiology. “The study shows that even at around age 50, individuals can make substantial changes to their lifestyle or prevention strategies on a personal level to significantly influence their life expectancy,” he said.
