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Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

nhs.uk

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Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#91

Post by vzidex »

giardini wrote: post #71

Leaving sex out of the equation was an unfortunate oversight. STDs cause a lot of grief and arguably as much or more damage than diet. AIDS speaks for itself; herpes is implicated in Alzheimer's, heart disease and other ailments and is just a general curse without the modern antivirals (although many persons are naturally immune); gonorrhea and syphilis continue to mutate to new drug-resistant forms.

You can have sex without getting STDs - either by sticking with one/few monogamous relationships, or just using protection.

On the other hand, sex has been found to have lots of benefits (I'm at work so I don't want to be looking up citations, but intuitively a few minutes of cardio can't be a bad thing).

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#92

Post by tomp »

> having a healthy diet score in the top 40% of people in the study

Correlation does not equal causation. It's obvious from this statement that the relationship is not (necessarily) causal. Yeah "top 10% of the people in study live longer" isn't really revolutionary.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#93

Post by downerending »

izzydata wrote: post #11
_Microft wrote: post #2

Surprising: one of the healthy habits mentioned is drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily) . If I drank any alcohol on a daily basis, I would be scared that it would go downhill from there. Habits are hard to change, so better do not pick up bad ones at all. I'm convinced that just avoiding to do stupid things is half the battle already.

That one doesn't make any sense to me. Alcohol is basically poison. Perhaps small amounts of it won't do any harm to you, but how could it possibly have a positive effect on your health?

Look up "hormesis". As they say, the dose makes the poison, and for a lot of "bad" things, small amounts are actually beneficial.

(Incredibly to me, even small doses of radiation can be protective against larger doses later.)

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#94

Post by switchbak »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #46
realtalk_sp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the example of HIIT. I discovered it inadvertently 10 years ago when I switched to recreational sprinting as a primary form of exercise. It results in excellent physical conditioning with a minimal time investment (about one hour per week total). Establishing habits is difficult and complex. Finding highly efficient (in time, energy, drudgery, money, etc) ways to achieve a desired outcome is a critically impor…

Any way for lazy people to get started with HIIT without going to a gym?

I find the biggest barrier to doing anything like this is the laziness itself. Thinking clearly about the choices I'm (not) making, and the trade offs I'm choosing helps me decide what I'd prefer to do. Reminding myself that activity makes me feel much better helps a lot too.

I hate gyms as well (I see them as a necessary evil these days). Personally I grab my bike and go mountain biking a lot. Not HIIT per-se, but very spikey bursts of effort.

You could accomplish some high quality interval work with a simple road bike (a hill helps) and a good attitude. The benefit to this being far less impact compared to sprints.

Just be a little careful starting with high intensity stuff - you want to slowly ramp this up over a handful of weeks or more. True high intensity work with insufficient muscle conditioning is a quick way to get injured (think ham/glute/calf pulls, tears, etc), and you do need to be careful when ramping up the cardio side - heart issues aren't fun.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#95

Post by gowld »

DenisM wrote: post #83

> drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily) This part Of “stay healthy” advice has always puzzled me - it looks like full blown alcoholism. Am I way off?

There's slow low key buzz in afternoon/evening, evening and there's overloading your liver binging.

Also those numbers are not adjusted for body size. Some non-obese people weigh 100lb and some weigh 260lb.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#96

Post by vkou »

DenisM wrote: post #83

> drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily) This part Of “stay healthy” advice has always puzzled me - it looks like full blown alcoholism. Am I way off?

4 units is not 4 beers.

A single 7% beer bottle is 3 units.

9 beers a week is... Not quite full-blown alcoholism. But I can see why the study picked that as a threshold.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#97

Post by jopsen »

Hmm, the list of habits wasn't even that bad:

Don't smoke, drink little, keep a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, exercise 30min per day, have a diet in the top 40-percentile most healthy.

These seems like feasible habits. Sure if you're overweight, smoking or drinking a lot changing the status isn't easy.

But you don't have to go vegan :)

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#98

Post by gowld »

giardini wrote: post #71

Leaving sex out of the equation was an unfortunate oversight. STDs cause a lot of grief and arguably as much or more damage than diet. AIDS speaks for itself; herpes is implicated in Alzheimer's, heart disease and other ailments and is just a general curse without the modern antivirals (although many persons are naturally immune); gonorrhea and syphilis continue to mutate to new drug-resistant forms.

Also celibacy causes a lot of unhealthy stress and unbalanced hormones.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#100

Post by kristofferR »

thebean11 wrote: post #31
bosie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you are not including any mental benefits? Or consider 'stress' of any sorts as a non-health issue?

Or social benefits, depending on which country you live in. Way too broad to say that any alcohol is "bad for you".

And social benefits can have massive physical repercussions. Happiness breeds healthiness, loneliness the opposite.

Of course I'm not implying that alcohol is in any way healthy, but it's probably healthier to have great drunk moments with your friends once in a while than it is to be lonely and not drink. It's important to note that you certainly can be social without alcohol though.

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