Harvard Life Expectancy Calculator: The 5 Healthy Habits | Longevity Engine

The Harvard 5 Healthy Habits study

Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed 34 years of data from 78,865 women in the Nurses' Health Study and 27 years of data from 44,354 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (Li et al., Circulation 2018).

They defined five low-risk lifestyle factors: never smoking, maintaining a normal BMI (18.5–24.9), engaging in 30+ minutes of daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, eating a high-quality diet (top 40% of the Alternate Healthy Eating Index), and moderate alcohol intake (up to 1 drink/day for women, 2 drinks/day for men).

At age 50, women with all 5 healthy habits lived an estimated 14.0 years longer (43.1 vs 29.0 remaining years) and men lived 12.2 years longer (37.6 vs 25.5 remaining years) compared to those who adopted zero healthy habits.

Disease-free life expectancy (Healthspan)

In a 2020 follow-up study published in the BMJ, the Harvard research team examined whether these added years were spent in good health or chronic disease.

They found that women with four or five healthy lifestyle factors had 34.4 disease-free years after age 50 (free of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer), compared to only 23.7 years among women with zero habits — an advantage of over 10 years of healthy life.

Related Calculators

• Healthspan Calculator
• VO2 Max & Longevity

Sources

• Li Y, Pan A, Wang DD, et al. Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population. Circulation. 2018;138(4):345–355.
• Li Y, Schoufour J, Wang DD, et al. Healthy lifestyle and life expectancy free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: prospective cohort study. BMJ. 2020;368:l6669.
• Statistics Canada. Life Tables, Canada, Provinces and Territories, 2020 to 2022. Catalogue 84-537-X.