"People who stick to five healthy habits in adulthood can add more than a decade to their lives," reports The Guardian. Regular readers of Behind the Headlines, or health news in general, will be unsurprised to learn that the habits are:

• not smoking
• maintaining a healthy weight 
• doing at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day
• eating a healthy diet high in fruit, vegetables and whole grains, and low in red meat, saturated fats and sugar 
• not drinking too much alcohol – current UK guidance recommends no more than 14 units a week for men and women

The findings are based on a US study that looked at the habits and health of about 123,000 health professionals over 30 years. Participants who adopted all 5 were 74% less likely to die during the study than those who adopted none of them. Women with these healthy habits lived 14 years longer on average than their counterparts, and men about 12 years longer. 

These results support current understanding of the benefits of healthy lifestyle habits. 

If you've been leading an unhealthy lifestyle, it may be unrealistic to attempt to switch to better habits overnight. One option is to focus on adopting just 1 habit first and that may lead to you adopting more, or perhaps even all, of them. For example, if you quit smoking, you may find you have more stamina to exercise.

Encouragingly, the study did find that each healthy habit individually contributed to reducing the risk of premature death.

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