Healthy lifestyle habits – Harvard Health

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Americans are far less healthy than they could be. Six out of every 10 Americans live with at least one chronic disease such as like heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. These diseases are responsible for seven out of every 10 deaths in the United States – and yet they are largely preventable.
Researchers analyzed data from the CDC and two long-term population studies – the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study – and found that people who practiced five specific lifestyle habits dramatically reduced their risks of heart disease and cancer, compared with those who did none of these things.
Those lifestyle habits are:
How effective are these measures? The researchers found that practicing all five habits from age 50 onward extended life by more than a decade compared with practicing none of them. Women who didn’t adopt any of the habits lived on average to age 79, while those who did all five lived to 93. Similarly, men who did not practice these five habits lived to 75 on average, while those that did lived to nearly 88.
For more information on self-care practices, check out Self-Care, a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School.
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