How to Live 14 Years Longer

Question: What are the factors that really could make your life longer and healthier? Every day we are barraged with a huge assortment of confusing and often contradictory medical advice. So, I'm pleased to report some simple advice that is likely to yield reasonable dividends in good health. Keep this checklist, and you can throw out the rest.
Study: A new paper (authors here) describes the relationship between lifestyle and mortality for about 20,000 middle-aged and elderly men and women living in Norfolk, a fairly rural part of England not far from London. The participants all began in generally good health and were closely tracked for 10 years. (The British National Health Service made illnesses easy to follow.) The study started with a detailed health and lifestyle questionnaire about significant medical history, smoking, alcohol use, and level of physical activity, reflecting both the demands of employment and recreational pleasures. The subjects' consumption of fruit and vegetables was estimated by blood tests for vitamin C, which for all practical purposes comes only from plant foods.
Scoring: The scoring was as simple as could be. A participant could collect from zero to four points. Not smoking netted one point. Five or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day (based on the measured vitamin C level) was worth another point. Some alcohol consumption, but not a lot, added another point. And finally, some physical activity, either at work or at play, added one more. A teetotaling smoker who works at an office desk and eats meat and potatoes instead of oranges while watching television—a low score of zero points. A cricket-playing nonsmoker who drinks five half-pints of Guinness a week and eats lots of apples and broccoli—a high score of four points.
Conclusion: What's the difference between zero and four? An astonishing fourfold difference in the likelihood of dying at a given age. This means that the four-point cricket player has the same likelihood of dying as a zero-point smoker who is 14 years younger. People who score in the one-, two-, and three-point range are at intermediate mortality risk, directly proportional to their scores. [more]