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It on your goal.
By Dana G. Smith
When Dr. Nir Barzilai met 100-year-old Helen Reichert, she was smoking a cigarette. Dr. Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, recalled that Reichert said doctors kept telling him to stop doing it. But those doctors were all dead, Reichert noted, and that’s not the case. Ms. Reichert lived almost another decade before passing away in 2011.
There are countless stories about people who reach 100, and their daily habits sometimes flout conventional advice on diet, exercise, and alcohol and tobacco use. Yet decades of research shows that ignoring this advice can negatively affect most people’s health and cut their lives short.
So to what extent can a person’s longevity be attributed to potential lifestyle choices, and to what extent is it simply luck or lucky genetics?It depends on how long you expect to live.
Research suggests that reaching 80, or even 90, is largely within our control. “There’s very transparent evidence that for the general population, a healthy lifestyle” extends life expectancy, Dr. Kelly said. Sofiya Milman, professor of medicine and genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
A study published last year, analyzing the lifestyles of more than 276,000 American veterans, both men and women, found that adopting eight healthy behaviors can improve people’s lives for up to 24 years. smart sleep, stress management, strong relationships, and smoking, abusing opioids, or excessive drinking.
If the veterans adhered to all eight behaviors, the researchers calculated that they could expect to live to about age 87. To most people, that probably sounds pretty good; after all, it’s almost 10 years longer than the average U.S. life expectancy. But to Dr. Milman, who was not involved in the study, the results showed that “even if you do everything right,” you still can’t expect to live to 100.
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