People who live healthy, live up to 10 years longer

It's been said often, but physicians from Zurich are now also supporting it with figures: people who eat a lot of fruit, exercise a lot, don't drink a lot of alcohol and don't smoke, live longer, as reported by the Swiss 'Aargauer Zeitung' on its website. "A healthy lifestyle can keep someone ten years younger", says Eva Martin-Diener of the University of Zurich, who is involved with the study.

For the study, a team surrounding Brian Martin of the Institute of Social- and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) used data from the Swiss National Cohort (SNC). It supplied data on tobacco use, fruit consumption, physical exercise and alcohol consumption of 16,721 individuals aged 16 to 90, in the period from 1977 until 1993. The researchers were able to connect this data with fatalities until the year 2008. They focused on cardiovascular diseases and cancer, since these diseases cause the most deaths in Switzerland. The team has now published the results in professional journal 'Preventive Medicine'.

It turned out that the effect of each separate factor is relatively large, Martin-Diener explains. Smoking appears to be the most harmful: compared to a group of non-smokers, smokers have, epidemiologically speaking, a 57 percent higher risk of premature death. Unhealthy food, little exercise and alcohol abuse each increase the mortality risk with 15 percent.

"What surprises us is the 2.5 times higher risk when all four risk factors are combined", Brian Martin says. A 75-year-old man with all risk factors has a 35-percent probability of surviving the next ten years. Someone of the same age without any risk factors, on the other hand, has a 67-percent chance. With women, these percentages are 47 and 74 percent respectively.