Small Lifestyle Changes Can Add Years to Your Life

Credit: Magnific

Small steps to improve sleep, exercise, and nutrition could both boost one’s health and lead to a longer life, according to research being done by researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Using the data of nearly 60,000 older adults in the UK Biobank, a massive patient health database, researchers found that people could add a year to their lifespans with miniscule changes to their lifestyle habits, such as getting only five extra minutes of sleep, adding 2 minutes of daily exercise, and as little as an extra half-serving of vegetables daily.

Registered dietitian Nicholas Koemel, PhD,  a research fellow with the University of Sydney and the study’s lead author, told to NBC News that “tiny behaviors… can actually have a very meaningful impact, and they add up over time to make a big difference in our longevity.”

Their findings were published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, a sister publication of the Lancet medical journal.

Researchers determined that even people with the worst health habits could increase their potential lifespans by four years by simply:

• Getting an extra 24 minutes of sleep per night

• Getting an extra 3.7 minutes of exercise per day

• Increasing their diet score by 23 points (this could be accomplished by an extra serving of vegetables or whole grains every day)

Some simple changes were associated with adding an astounding  decade to a lifespan, including:

• Getting an extra 3 hours of sleep every night

• Getting an extra 24.9 minutes of exercise every day

• A 35-point increase in diet quality

Koemel cautioned against considering of these lifestyle changes as a “silver bullet.”

A similar study, by the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and published in the Lancet, found that sitting for 30 fewer minutes a day is linked to a 7% decrease in deaths.  An extra 5 minutes of moderate to intense exercise, was associated with 10% fewer deaths as compared to the average. The Norwegian study analyzed the health data of over 135,000 adults across the U.S., U.K., Norway and Sweden.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 37% of Americans do not get the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, which can cause both short and long-term health problems, and impact mental and physical health. Lack of sleep can lead to depression, difficulty focusing, as well as heart disease and obesity.

Several experts who were not involved in either the Australia nor the Norwegian study  told NBC News that they were not surprised by either studies’ results.

Dr. Maha Alattar, MD, medical director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Health Center for Sleep Medicine, explained that  “adding five minutes may not help you that one day, but ... at the end of the month, it will add up to a lot of hours. That can translate to long-term better health because I look at it the other way, and that’s how we look at sleep deprivation.”

Dr. Alattar recommended that people should first try adding 30 minutes of sleep to their current baseline, rather than immediately focusing on getting eight hours per night.