The Small Daily Habits That Add 9+ Years To Life

Things that aren’t on the list:

• Springing out of bed for a 5am run every morning
• Getting a divorce
• Drinking 10% of your bodyweight in kale smoothies
• Regular blood transfusions from a team of healthy teenagers
• Cold water plunges

Instead, the actual habits we’re going to talk about today are quite minor things, but they add up to big differences.

First, we were a little silly with the above list, but actually before we move on, let’s examine it:

• Springing out of bed for a 5am run every morning? Can help: The Optimal Morning Routine, Per Neuroscience
• Getting a divorce? Can help: How Relationships Affect The Heart (For Better Or For Worse)
• Drinking 10% of your bodyweight in kale smoothies? Please don’t do that, but kale is good, yes: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It! ← this is about lutein, and dark green leafy vegetables are lutein superstars: A half cup of kale has 50 times more lutein than an egg.
• Regular blood transfusions from a team of healthy teenagers? Eastern European folklore notwithstanding, this one won’t help unless you have a condition that necessitates such (e.g. hematological cancer). We could quibble about some blood-related anti-aging therapies that involve donating parts of blood, but that’d take a whole article that we haven’t written yet. Maybe soon!
• Cold water plunges? Can help (but watch out): Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip?

The easier list

We’ll not keep it a mystery:

• Move more
• Sit less
• Sleep better
• Eat better

Now, probably none of those things are a shocking surprise, but what recent science has found is that the amount that most people need to improve by (in order to enjoy benefits) is much smaller than previously believed.

Specifically, two large cohort analyses have shown that very small, realistic daily improvements in movement, sitting time, sleep, and diet are associated with serious reductions in mortality risk and notable gains in lifespan and healthspan.

One of them (Dr. Maria Hagströmer et al.) found adding literally just 5 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and reducing sedentary time by 30 minutes per day could reduce mortality by up to 10%.

You can find that paper here: Deaths potentially averted by small changes in physical activity and sedentary time: an individual participant data meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies

Another (Dr. Dorothea Dumuid et al.) found that sleeping 7.2–8.0 hours per day, doing more than 42 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous exercise, and achieving a diet quality score* of 57.5–72.5 were associated with an average 9.35 additional years of healthy lifespan, compared to not doing those things.

^{*The diet quality score (DQS) involves assessing dietary components that make things better or worse, such as intake of vegetables, fruits, grains, fish, other meats, dairy, oils, and sugar-sweetened beverages (ranging 0–100; higher indicates better quality)}

If those changes seem too much, then note also that as little as 5 extra minutes of sleep per day, 1.9 additional minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day, and improving by just 5 points in the DQS were associated with 1 extra year of healthy lifespan.

There’s a dose-response relationship here, as larger but still modest combined changes—24 more minutes of sleep per day, 3.7 more minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day, and a 23-point DQS improvement—were associated with about 4 additional years lived in good health.

You can find that paper here: Minimum combined sleep, physical activity, and nutrition variations associated with lifeSPAN and healthSPAN improvements: a population cohort study

Ok, but how to implement that?

Short answer: little by little!

Long answer: we’ll give our own long answer another day, as we’re out of room for today, but…

You might like these excellent books that we’ve reviewed by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, who specializes in getting people to do just this:

• The Four Pillar Plan – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
• Feel Better In 5 – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
• Make Change That Lasts – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Take care!