Tuesday, February 8, 2011

7 Health Factors for Longevity

Do the simple choices we make each day really have an impact on our life?  Well let's take a little quiz and find out.  How many of the following do you do on a regular basis?
  1. Sleep 6.5 to 9 hours per night
  2. Don't eat unhealthy food between meals
  3. Eat Breakfast regularly
  4. Maintain proper body weight
  5. Exercise regularly
  6. Moderate to no use of alcohol
  7. Don't smoke or use tobacco
OK, So now you should have a count of how many of these things you do on a regular basis.  (Yes, there is actual research on this.)  The next step is utilize this number to determine your Health Age.  You take your accurate age (don't lie to yourself but the actual number of years from birth to current age) and find the number of these things to do to find your true Health Age or the Age your body actually feels.

                                                                   Calculated Age

Habits 0-2Habits 3Habits 4Habits 5Habits 6Habits 7
Current Age   2034.327.420.518.915.810.6
Current Age   3046.939.133.029.425.318.9
Current Age   4059.450.745.439.934.827.1
Current Age   5072.062.457.950.344.335.3
Current Age   6084.574.070.460.853.843.2
Current Age   7097.185.782.871.363.251.8


So back to our original question, "Do the simple choices we make each Day impact our Lives?"  I think you can now see a resounding YES!!  The one I always like to point out is the 60 year old who does 0-2 of these things, they have a health age over 80!!  There is another American Habit than has major impact on the length of our lives as well, TV.  Australian researches last year concluded that watching over 4 hours of television per day would shorten the average persons life 4 years!  So if the average life expectancy is 78 years, it is 74 years for someone watching more than 4 hours of TV per day.  So is 50 the new 30?  Only if you do these 7 things!

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