Bad habits can age you

A recent study shows that common bad habits really can make you look and feel older, and may lead to premature death.

Researchers followed nearly 5,000 British adults for twenty years. The average age of the participants was 44, with all being at least 18 or older when the study began. Participants were asked about lifestyle habits, including tobacco and alcohol use and diet and exercise choices.

After 20 years, people who smoked, drank frequently, didn’t exercise often, and ate poorly were described as seeming “12 years older than people in the healthiest group.”

Excessive drinking was described as more than two alcoholic drinks a day for women and more than three drinks per day for men. Less than two hours per week of physical activity was considered inadequate physical activity, and fewer than three daily servings of fruits or vegetables constituted a poor diet in the unhealthiest group.

In addition to aging more quickly, people who engaged in all four unhealthy behaviors were more likely to die during the 20 years of the study. Among the 314 participants who demonstrated all four unhealthy behaviors, 29% died before the completion of the study. Only 8% of the 387 participants who engaged in none of the unhealthy behaviors died during the 20-year research period.