Extend your life with five healthy habits

In Massachusetts, maintaining five healthy habits — eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy body weight, not drinking too much alcohol, and not smoking — during adulthood may add more than a decade to life expectancy, according to a new study led by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Researchers also found that American women and men who maintained the healthiest lifestyles were 82 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 65 percent less likely to die from cancer when compared with those with the least healthy lifestyles over the course of the roughly 30-year study period.

Today, Americans have a shorter average life expectancy — 79.3 years — than almost all other high-income countries.  In 2015, the U.S. ranked 31st in the world for life expectancy. The new study aimed to quantify how much healthy lifestyle factors might be able to boost longevity in the U.S. population.