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London—

To get an extra 14 years of life, don’t smoke, eat lots of fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly and drink alcohol in moderation. That’s the finding of a study that tracked about 20,000 people in the United Kingdom.

Kay-TeeKhaw of the University of Cambridge and colleagues calculated that people who adopted these four healthy habits lived an average of 14 years longer than those who didn’t.

“We’ve known for a long time that these behaviors are good things to do, but we’ve never seen these additive benefits before,” said Susan Jebb, head of Nutrition and Health at Britain’s Medical Research Council, which helped pay for the study.

“Just doing one of these behaviors helps, but every step you make to improve your health seems to have an added benefit,” said Jebb, who was not involved in the study.

The benefits were also seen regardless of whether people were fat and what social class they came from.  The findings were published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal.

The study included healthy adults ages 45 to 79.  Participants filled in a health questionnaire between 1993 and 1997 and nurses conducted a medical exam at a clinic.

Participants scored a point each for not smoking, regular physical activity, eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and moderate alcohol intake.

Dr. Tim Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organization, said, “We can’t say that any one person could gain 1 year by doing these things.  The 14 years is an average across the population of what’s theoretically possible”.

Source:  Associated Press to the

St. Petersburg Times January 9, 2008

Study:  Healthy Habits Add 14 Years To Life

Health Question:

I must confess that I buy water in bottles. They are really convenient.  I am also, however, a long-time recycler. It hurts my environmental heart to just toss the bottles. So I refill and reuse them over and over. But I have recently heard that the bottles should not be reused.  Some bottles even say so on the label.  Is there any health or safety reason for this?

The main concern of bottlers is germs. Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association, says: “When our members put that water in a bottle, it’s under sanitary conditions. When you open the bottle, you drink from it, and when you let that bottle sit, bacteria can grow in it. If someone then takes that bottle, doesn’t clean it properly and then drinks from it, he could get sick.”

I would add that a little common sense would be in order: If you are out for a walk, empty a just-purchased bottle and then refill it from a drinking fountain, you should be OK. Likewise, if you are willing to scrub your used bottles with a bottle brush, using hot, soapy water and reaching all the nooks and crannies, it’s hard to see how you could go wrong.

On the other hand, you could just buy one or two easier-to-clean reusable water bottles. And whenever you do buy a disposable bottle, you can be a fairly “green” human being if you just make sure it ends up in a recycling bin — unlike most of its kind.

Source: Your Health by Kim Painter, USA TODAY September 24, 2007