The Long Life Equation

By Staff

A new book suggests certain lifestyle factors can add, or subtract years to your life and is called 'The Long Life Equation', by Dr Trisha Macnair In the book, the author has listed activities that add years to your life. Macnair said washing your hands adds two years, and good dental hygiene can add six more years in your life. But smoking, fast food, no exercise and a stressful life can strip away 20 years.
A 2006 study from University of California in Los Angeles showed that men and women live healthier, wealthier, happier and longer lives when they are in a stable partnership.

The study confirmed that married couples were more likely to live to an old age than their divorced, widowed or unmarried counterparts.A stable partnership can actually add on seven years to life. A divorce can also strip away 3 years from your life, as it takes longer-lasting, emotional and physical toll on former spouses than virtually any other life stress.

Recent studies indicate that divorced adults have higher rates of emotional disturbance, accidental death and death from heart disease. The divorced also have higher rates of admission to psychiatric facilities and make more visits to doctors than people who are married, single or widowed.

A Harvard Alumni Study, which took into account more than 71,000 men who had graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania between 1916 and 1954, found that those men who regularly burned 8400kJ a week while exercising lived, on average, two years longer than sedentary types.
Regular exercise also adds as much as two or more years to your life. But cigarette smoking can actually reduce 8 years from your life

Read more about: book review lifestyle