Life Extending Habits

Bad habits can age you by 12 years reports that combination of four bad habits can increase the risk of death for an individual. The study evaluated the effects of smoking, alcohol, exercise and diet and determined that achieving certain threshold levels improve a person's health. The behaviors, thresholds and my experience are summarized in the table below.

	Target Levels
Behavior	Healthy	Personal Experience
Smoking	Never or had quit	Never
Drinking Alcohol	Fewer than 3 glasses (men) or 2 glasses (women) per day	zero to five glasses
Exercise	More than two hours per week	two to four hours
Fruits and Vegetables	Eating 3 servings of vegetables and fruit per day	one to five servings

It appears that I am doing just well enough in two of the four behaviors, with room for improvement in the other two. Of course, doing better is no guarantee of a longer life, but I still consider it a good idea to reduce intake of alcohol and increase the amount of fruits and vegetables to reduce health risks.

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This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

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