Want to live longer? Tiny changes to your sleep, exercise and diet could add a year to your life
New research suggests that getting even just a few more minutes of sleep and exercise and eating an extra cup of vegetables every day can significantly boost longevity
Want to live longer but don’t want to change what you’re already doing to try and live a healthy life? We have good news. You likely don’t need to spend an extra three hours in the gym every week. You also probably don’t need to get eight hours of sleep every night. And you likely don’t have to revamp your diet, either. New research suggests that people don’t need to pursue major lifestyle changes to see meaningful improvements in health.
In fact, adding just a few more minutes of sleep and exercise to your day, as well as some extra whole grains or vegetables, can increase your lifespan by a year, according to a study published in eClinicalMedicine.
“We always think that we need to make these massive overhauls, especially at the beginning of the year with New Year’s resolutions,” says lead study author Nicholas Koemel, a dietitian and research fellow at the University of Sydney. But “tweaks add up to make something meaningful. And that might make us be able to sustain them much further in the long run.”
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So what’s the least amount of work a person needs to do to live a longer and healthier life?
For about eight years, his team followed nearly 60,000 people in the UK Biobank, a repository of population-level health data. Combining sleep and physical activity data from wrist wearables and self-reported diet surveys, the researchers estimated approximate changes in lifespan, as well as health span—defined as the number of years in which people were free of five major health conditions, including as cardiovascular disease and dementia.
Tacking on as little as five more minutes of sleep, two more minutes of vigorous or moderate exercise and an extra couple of tablespoons of vegetables per day (or skipping one serving of processed meat per week) could theoretically add a year to life expectancy for people who had poor lifestyle habits. And adding 24 minutes to sleep, exercising about four minutes more and fitting in an additional cup of veggies and a serving of whole grains per day could extend their health span by four years.
For those who feel up to doing even more, the study found that people who got seven to eight hours of sleep and took more than 40 minutes of exercise per day and had a high-quality diet could potentially gain more than nine years of additional life and health span.
What stood out most about these results was that practicing good sleep, exercise and diet together was important, Koemel says. “These behaviors are well known to be interconnected. We’ve all had that night where we don’t get as much sleep as we may want, and the next day we’re grabbing a bag of chips or perhaps not exercising as much.”
The new analysis showed that just trying to get more sleep and doing nothing else would mean people needed to sleep 60 percent more per day to achieve the same additional year of lifespan. Diet improvements by themselves were not enough to make any significant change in lifespan.
“The results are promising and align with my view about holistic health and lifestyle habits, says Amy Jamieson, professor and chair of the Department of Exercise & Sport Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I do believe that small changes can make major impacts.”
Jamieson notes that the U.K.-centric data might not reflect other countries and cultures—the U.S. diet, for example, is heavy in ultraprocessed foods. Differences in health care systems, environmental exposures, access to care and medication also play a major role in life expectancy and health span. Clinical trials would be needed to fully establish relationships between lifestyle habits and longevity, Koemel says.
Still, the findings jibe with a separate study published online in the Lancet on the same day as Koemel’s paperandco-authored by one of his colleagues. In an analysis of data from the U.S., Sweden and Norway, as well as from the UK Biobank, the researchers found that small increases in daily physical activity—as little as an additional five-minute walk at a moderate pace—could potentially reduce mortality risk by as much as 10 percent.
“What strikes me is that we converged on this idea that small changes make a difference without even talking to each other about the individual studies,” Koemel says, “something that has resonated with a lot of the field is: moving the goal post closer to us makes it more accessible, makes things more practical—and, most importantly, makes healthy habits sustainable.”
For some people, making the tiniest change is a helpful starting point, Koemel says. He adds that these tweaks to sleep, diet and exercise do not necessarily give you a “magic button” for longer life—but they could kickstart healthy habits that stick.
As the saying goes, a little could go a long way.
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