‘Secret’ to long life is taking care of yourself

WHAT’S the secret to living longer? It’s a question to which we all want the answer.

Doctors have found five ways you can add more than 10 years to your life – and you can still enjoy a glass of wine each day.

Adults who eat healthily, exercise regularly and don’t smoke can prolong their life expectancy at 50 by 14 years for women and 12 years for men, according to research published in the journal Circulation.

You also need to keep your body weight at a healthy level and not drink too much, experts from Harvard Chan School of Public Health found.

Men and women who maintained a healthy lifestyle were 82 per cent less likely to die of heart disease and 65 per cent less likely to to die from cancer compared to those who led an unhealthy life.

Harvard Chan researchers looked at 34 years of data on 78,865 women and 27 years of data from 44,354 men.

They found the five key factors for living a long, healthy life are:

Not smoking Having a healthy BMI of 18.5–24.9

Exercising for at least 30 minutes every day

Drinking moderately – no more than one small glass of wine for women and two small glasses of wine for men each day

Eating a healthy, balanced diet

Women who don’t adopt the healthy lifestyle plan have a life expectancy of 79 and men who don’t follow the tips have a life expectancy of 75, according to the research.

But if they lived by the five rules above their life expectancy would increase to 93 and 87 respectively.

And they were 74 per cent less likely to die during the course of the 30-year study.