
Study calculates effect on lifespan of healthy habits - spking
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/30/the-five-habits-that-can-add-more-than-a-decade-to-your-life
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everdev
One thing you realize by practicing healthy "life extending" habits is that
you feel better and actually find value in the present. The extra life if it
happens is just a bonus. The real win is quality of life now while it matters.

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godelmachine
Well said!

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giarc
How much more research do we need to say people will live longer if they
"[consumed] a healthy diet, controlled their weight, took regular exercise,
drank in moderation and did not smoke."

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aaron695
Most of what you quoted has no meaning.

Don't smoke is probably true (does vaping nitiotine increase life expectancy?)

The rest not at all.

What's moderation. Some say 0%.

What's regular exercise and how do you do that? Or do we believe telling
people is enough. It's also not true as far as I know. I though a lot of light
activity is much more healthier than exercise.

There's evedence fatter people later in life live longer. What's the graph of
weights for my DNA and how do I manage life long changes as I move between the
weight I should be at parts of my life.

What's a 'healthy diet'? it's rubbish that some things are 'healthy' it's just
somethings are not bad for you.

This article is next to useless.

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a_c
Avoid facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, reddit, TV and hackernews (which
I couldn't). One can easily recoup another decade of life

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sp527
People should definitely do this no matter what.

But I don’t think it’s so simple. You also have to develop a long-term habit
of minimizing wasted time.

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lemonberry
As long as daydreaming, play and leisure aren't considered wasted time.

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soared
I’d imagine you could guess these, not much surprising.

> The five healthy habits were defined as not smoking; having a body mass
> index between 18.5 and 25; taking at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a
> day, having no more than one 150ml glass of wine a day for women, or two for
> men; and having a diet rich in items such as fruit, vegetables and whole
> grains and low in red meat, saturated fats and sugar.

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cuchoi
Does anybody knows what is "...rich in items such as fruit, vegetables and
whole grains" and "...low in red meat, saturated fats and sugar"? This is way
too vague for me and I couldn't find it in the paper.

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jackvalentine
Don’t eat processed food.

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godelmachine
In today's day and age, its tough to escape sugar. Surely you would agree.

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jackvalentine
Don’t eat processed food.

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gwern
Who cares? As always, correlation!=causation. The causal effect of alcohol is
notoriously the topic of fierce debate for decades now, diet is known
confounded by things like healthy user bias, and exercise actually has been
the subject of randomized experiments and the effect on mortality is less than
the naive correlation. These results are already known to be wrong when
interpreted the way they want them to, and beating a dead horse won't extend
its lifespan.

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sjcsjc
Josh Mitteldorf's nascent project using the Horvath Clock might be of interest
to some people here.

[https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2018/04/08/the-
mother...](https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2018/04/08/the-mother-of-
all-clinical-trials-part-i/)

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lostmsu
So where are the numbers? The article only mention cancer and heart issues.
But the way to tell it was weird. No timespan is mentioned. Did I miss it?

Asking, because if they less likely die from cancer they more likely died from
something else.

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lostmsu
Oh, found it: +12y for men, +14 for women. No data per habit.

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godelmachine
On a similar note -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959472)

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test6554
Making correlation vs causation mistakes could add years of health-related
articles to a journalist's portfolio.

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sevensor
They must have done quite a large study, if they're able to detect any effect
at all. There's a huge amount of variation in human lifespan that cannot be
attributed to lifestyle choices.

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lentil_soup
123.000 people according to the article

