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Longevity is a goal for many people, but the secret to living a longer, healthier life isn’t always clear. Life expectancy in the United States is currently 77.5 years for both men and women, but many people live much longer than that.
Now, a new study is examining common characteristics among people who live to be over 100 years old, so-called centenarians. In the study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed data from 5,222 people who participated in the China Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study, one of the largest cohorts of people aged 80 and over.
Study participants were given a healthy lifestyle score that took into account factors such as smoking history, exercise, and diet, with higher scores out of 100 suggesting a greater likelihood of better health. After five years, the researchers found that people with the highest healthy lifestyle scores were 61% more likely to live to be 100 or older than those with the lowest scores. But there were other factors that suggested a person was more likely to live to be over 100.
While there has been research on longevity before, this study focused on people aged 80 and over, what study co-author Dr Xiang Gao, director of the Fudan University Institute of Nutrition, calls the “oldest age group.”
“Aging is associated with a variety of chronic diseases, and an increasing aging population poses new challenges for healthcare systems,” Gao told Yahoo Life. Gao said the goal of the study is to “provide new insights for promoting healthy aging and longevity.”
So what factors can improve your chances of reaching 100 one day, and why might it help? Here’s what research tells us, and what doctors think.
How can we live longer?
The study identified several key factors that contributed to participants living to age 100 or older. Non-smokers were 25% more likely to live to age 100, and those who exercised regularly were 31% more likely. Those who consumed a diverse diet were also 23% more likely to live to age 100 or older.
A study published in the journal Nutrients last year also found that eating a healthy diet, avoiding smoking and living an active life could help people live longer.
“This adds to a growing body of information that lifestyle factors are very important to health outcomes,” Dr. James Powers, professor of medicine in the department of geriatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, tells Yahoo Life. “It’s promising as we gain more control over our own health.”
It’s important to note that the study focused on older adults and offers specific advice for this age group. Dr. Scott Kaiser, a geriatrician and director of geriatric cognitive health at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, California, tells Yahoo Life: “This shows that the components of a healthy lifestyle are still important. They’re always important. It’s never too early or too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle. It’s always important.”
How about alcohol?
While the study didn’t find a link between drinking alcohol and living to 100, when the researchers narrowed the criteria, they did find that people who drank moderate amounts of alcohol (moderate alcohol consumption is one drink or less per day for women and two drinks or less per day for men), were slightly more likely to live longer.
“It doesn’t seem like alcohol consumption is harmful in any way,” Powers said, but he noted that this is an area the medical community is still trying to figure out. “Alcohol may be good for you to some extent, but at what limit?” he said.
What do doctors think?
“These findings suggest that the effects of aging are more prevalent in older adults than in older adults,” said study co-author Maria Troella Carney, PhD, a geriatrician at Northwell Health. The Ageing Revolutionwho told Yahoo Life that the findings aren’t shocking, but serve as a reminder of the importance of a healthy lifestyle. “So much of our life expectancy is behavioral,” she says. “Longevity and life expectancy are a function of lifestyle, genetics, and the injuries we’ve sustained.”
Medicine has made “incredible advances over the last 100 years, and I believe we can make even more advances through healthy lifestyles,” Carney says.
Eating a diverse diet “increases your chances of getting a wide range of nutrients that are essential to keep your body functioning optimally, which can lead to longer life,” says Dr. Sarah Leonard, a family medicine and geriatrician at the Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
“Exercise has many benefits for older adults, including cardiovascular health, memory and cognition, maintaining strength and muscle mass, reducing the risk of falls, reducing depression and anxiety, and increasing independence in daily activities,” Leonard says, all of which are important for living longer, she adds.
Smoking is linked to chronic diseases as well as several types of cancer, Leonard said. “People who have never smoked have a lower risk of developing diseases that could limit their survival to 100 years,” he said.
Powers says there’s a “meaningful difference” in the health of people who adopt a healthy lifestyle compared to those who don’t. “It means more time with family, longer life spans, and more independence,” Powers says. “Those are huge factors for a lot of people. Fewer sick days, better quality of life.”
But doctors agree that more research is needed on alcohol and healthy living. “I’ve met centenarians who say the secret to their longevity is having one drink every night, and I’ve also met centenarians who say they’ve never had a drop of alcohol,” Leonard says. “As a geriatrician, if your doctor hasn’t advised you to abstain, I think an occasional drink is generally OK and probably won’t affect your lifespan, but moderation is key.”
Carney agrees: “When it comes to alcohol, my advice is to drink in moderation,” she says. “Any more than that and it can start to harm your liver. [and] It affects the skin and it affects the heart.”
Doctors note that this is just one study and not the final word on healthy aging, but they agree that it’s in line with what most in the medical community recommends for healthy aging.
“I hope people will take these findings as further evidence that making beneficial lifestyle choices related to diet, exercise and smoking can really help us live as many healthy days as possible as we age,” Leonard said.
Kaiser emphasizes that “there are no guarantees, and there are exceptional people who smoke every day and live to be 100 without doing anything, but following healthy lifestyle principles certainly increases your chances of living a long life.”
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