Twenty scientists from two health-conscious continents figured out the impact down to fine details to help you target simple tweaks.
New Study: These 3 Things Best Prevent Premature Death
Published on Feb. 27, 2025
These days there’s so much scientific wisdom about ways to lengthen your lifespan that it’s almost tricky to know exactly what to focus on. Should you follow the Blue Zones lifestyle? Eat a Mediterranean diet? Meditate to manage stress?
Health researchers specializing in fitness, biomedicine, and nutrition got together to narrow in on three main habits that might give you the biggest advantage when it comes to stretching out your lifespan. Hailing primarily from Australia with input from researchers in Denmark and Spain, together they discovered that sleep, nutrition, and physical activity were the three biggest predictors of a long life.
For a study published February 26, 2025 in the peer-vetted BMC Medical journal, the team, totaling 20 research professionals, assessed data from 59,078 participants who reported their dietary intake over seven days. They also wore tracking devices to monitor their hours spent sleeping each day, and time spent engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Participants’ median age was 64 years old, and 45% were male which leads to the assumption that 55% were female.
Participants’ dietary self-reports determined their intake of these 10 foods, which the researchers coded as “0-100 for all components with higher values indicating higher quality.”
- vegetables
- fruits
- fish
- dairy
- whole grains
- vegetable oils
- refined grains
- processed meats
- unprocessed meats
- sugary beverages
The researchers kept track of these individuals over a median period of eight years, at which point 2,458 mortalities had occurred.
Outcomes revealed that those who scored between 57.5 and 72.5 on the nutrition scale saw the lowest “hazard ratio” (meaning premature death risk), as did participants who slept 7.2 to eight hours each day, and those who engaged in 42 to 103 minutes of physical activity every day.
That might sound like the dream lifestyle for most of us…but even for those less likely to meet such optimal criteria, the researchers found that minor intentional improvements could help reduce the risk of early death.
Folks saw a 10% lower all-cause mortality risk just by making the following changes:
- For people who slept an average of 5.5 hours per day, getting 15 minutes more sleep
- For people who got just 7.3 minutes of physical activity, adding 1.6 minutes
- Eating an one-half greater serving of vegetables per day, or one less serving of processed meat per week.
An impressive 50% lower all-cause mortality risk resulted from combining the following routine improvements:
- 75 minutes more sleep per day
- 12.5 minutes moderate to vigorous physical activity
- It’s not clear from the study’s abstract exactly the quantity of each listed food yielded this result, but an informal calculation suggests 2.5 servings more fruits and vegetables and five fewer servings of processed meats per week helped reach this reduced death risk.
It may go to show how just a little more effort can impact your wellness long-term.
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