Longevity: what actually helps you live longer and healthier

Contents 17

1. What you will find here
2. What does longevity mean, and what can you change?
3. How many years can healthy habits add?
4. What should you eat to live longer?
5. How much exercise do you need for longevity?
6. How much sleep helps you live longer?
7. How much do smoking and alcohol cost you?
8. Do friends and family help you live longer?
9. Does body weight matter for longevity?
10. Which health checks matter most?
11. What about the Blue Zones?
12. Do longevity supplements work?
13. Start here: one thing for tomorrow
14. Recipes for a longevity way of eating
15. FAQ
16. Related
17. Sources

By Nikola · Precision Nutrition L1 · Sources checked 2026-11-05

Most of what helps you live longer is unglamorous and well tested: do not smoke, move most days, eat mostly plants with olive oil, fish, beans and nuts, sleep seven to nine hours, drink little or no alcohol, keep a healthy weight and stay close to people. In a study that followed more than 123,000 US adults for up to 34 years, women who kept five low-risk habits lived about 14 years longer than women who kept none, and men about 12 years longer.

This guide puts the strongest evidence in one place, with what each study measured and where it stops. It is about groups of people, not a promise for you. If you have a long-term condition or take medication, talk to your doctor before you make big changes to how you eat or exercise.

What you will find here

• What longevity means and what you can change
• How many years healthy habits can add
• What to eat
• How much to move
• How much to sleep
• Smoking and alcohol
• Friends and family
• Body weight and muscle
• Health checks
• The Blue Zones, and why they are debated
• Longevity supplements: the honest answer
• Start here: one thing for tomorrow
• Recipes for a longevity way of eating

What does longevity mean, and what can you change?

Longevity is how long you live. What most people really want is healthspan: the years you live in good health, still able to do the things you care about. The two go together, because the habits that lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and several cancers also keep you independent for longer. The US National Institute on Aging notes that regular exercise is linked to more years lived without disability.

You cannot change your genes or the year you were born. You can change what you do every day, and the research on daily habits is surprisingly consistent. The sections below go through them one at a time, starting with the study that put a number on all of them together.

How many years can healthy habits add?

In the largest analysis of its kind, people with five low-risk habits lived 12 to 14 years longer than people with none. The study used two long-running US cohorts, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study: 78,865 women and 44,354 men followed for up to 34 years.

At age 50, women with none of the five could expect about 29 more years of life and women with all five about 43. For men the figures were about 25.5 and 37.6 years. People with all five habits had a 74% lower risk of dying during follow-up than people with none.

Two honest notes. This is an observational study: people who keep all five habits also differ in income, education and access to care, and statistics cannot remove all of that. And the alcohol habit has not aged well. Larger analyses since then, covered below, do not show that light drinking helps you live longer.

What should you eat to live longer?

There is no single longevity diet, but the eating patterns with the best evidence look alike: mostly vegetables, fruit, beans and lentils, whole grains and nuts, olive oil as the main fat, fish often, and little processed meat, sugar and salt. The Mediterranean diet has the strongest data.

• A randomised trial. In PREDIMED, 7,447 Spanish adults aged 55 to 80 at high cardiovascular risk were assigned to a Mediterranean diet with extra virgin olive oil, the same diet with mixed nuts, or advice to cut fat. Over a median of 4.8 years, the two Mediterranean groups had about 30% fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths. The trial was republished in 2018 after problems with randomisation at some sites, with the same conclusion.
• A large cohort. Among 22,043 Greek adults, each 2-point step up on a 0-9 Mediterranean diet score was linked to a 25% lower risk of death from any cause over a median of 44 months. This is an association, not proof.
• Fruit and vegetables. An analysis of two US cohorts plus a meta-analysis of 26 cohorts (1.9 million people) found the lowest risk of death at about five servings a day, two of fruit and three of vegetables: 13% lower than at two servings. Eating more than five brought no further drop. Fruit juice and potatoes were not linked to lower mortality.

The World Health Organization’s benchmarks for adults are a useful checklist:

In practice that means beans or lentils most days, a handful of walnuts or almonds, oily fish such as sardines, mackerel or salmon once or twice a week, and leafy greens like spinach and kale. To start, read our Mediterranean diet for beginners guide, use the 7-day Mediterranean meal plan, and see what the research says about its benefits and risks. If inflammation is your concern, the 7-day anti-inflammatory meal plan follows the same pattern, and gut health foods covers the fibre side.

How much exercise do you need for longevity?

WHO recommends that all adults do 150-300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75-150 minutes of vigorous activity, plus regular muscle-strengthening exercise, and that everyone sits less. People who are not active enough have a 20-30% higher risk of death than people who are. For blood pressure, WHO adds strength exercises on two or more days a week.

Steps are an easier way to count. A meta-analysis of 15 cohorts with 47,471 adults, followed for a median of 7.1 years, compared four groups by daily steps. The most active group, at a median of about 10,900 steps, had a 53% lower risk of death than the least active group at about 3,550 steps. The benefit levelled off at about 6,000-8,000 steps a day in adults aged 60 and over, and at about 8,000-10,000 in younger adults.

In practice: a brisk 30-minute walk on five days covers the weekly minimum, and two short sessions of squats, push-ups against a wall or a table, or carrying shopping bags keep your muscles working. Any amount is better than none.

How much sleep helps you live longer?

The National Institute on Aging advises adults to aim for seven to nine hours a night and to keep a regular sleep schedule. A meta-analysis of 16 studies with nearly 1.4 million people linked both short sleep (pooled relative risk of death 1.12) and long sleep (1.30) with higher mortality. These are associations based on how long people said they slept, so they cannot show that changing your sleep changes your risk. They do show that very short and very long sleep are both worth a conversation with your doctor. More on habits that help: why sleep is the cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle.

How much do smoking and alcohol cost you?

Smoking is the single biggest avoidable risk. In 50 years of follow-up of British male doctors, men who kept smoking cigarettes died about 10 years earlier than lifelong non-smokers. Stopping helped at every age: quitting at 30 gained about 10 years of life expectancy, at 40 about 9, at 50 about 6 and at 60 about 3. WHO puts the global toll of tobacco at more than 7 million deaths a year, and says second-hand smoke kills more than 1.6 million people prematurely every year.

Alcohol does not help you live longer. A 2023 meta-analysis of 107 cohort studies with 4.8 million participants compared drinkers with people who had never drunk. Occasional drinkers (under 1.3 g of alcohol a day) and low-volume drinkers (1.3-24 g a day) did not have a significantly lower risk of death, and risk rose at higher intakes. The WHO Regional Office for Europe states that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for health, because the cancer risk starts with the first drink. If you drink, less is better. If you do not drink, there is no health reason to start, and that includes red wine.

Do friends and family help you live longer?

They do, and the effect is large. A meta-analysis of 148 studies with 308,849 people found that those with stronger social relationships had a 50% higher likelihood of survival over the study periods, an effect the authors called comparable with well-established risk factors. The National Institute on Aging links social isolation and loneliness with higher risk of heart disease, depression and cognitive decline.

In practice: a regular weekly call, a shared meal, a walking group or a class counts. Eating together is also part of the Mediterranean way of life that researchers study, not only the olive oil.

Does body weight matter for longevity?

Yes, at both ends. In a meta-analysis of 239 studies with 10.6 million people, the lowest risk of death among never-smokers without chronic disease was at a BMI of about 20-25. Above 25, each 5 extra BMI units raised the risk by roughly 29-39%, depending on the region. The National Institute on Aging warns against being underweight as well as obese, and notes that in adults over 55, muscle mass predicted longevity better than weight or BMI did.

BMI is a rough tool: it cannot tell muscle from fat. That is one more reason to pair the food changes above with strength exercise. Our articles on understanding BMI and how obesity affects your health go into more detail.

Which health checks matter most?

Blood pressure is the one most people miss. WHO estimates that about 1.4 billion adults aged 30 to 79 have high blood pressure, that 44% of them do not know it, and that only 23% have it under control. WHO calls hypertension a major cause of premature death worldwide. The National Institute on Aging recommends seeing your doctor at least once a year for screenings that catch disease early.

Know your blood pressure, and ask about blood sugar and cholesterol at your check-up. If your blood pressure is high, the DASH diet was built for it, and foods high in potassium lists the foods that fit.

What about the Blue Zones?

The Blue Zones are places described as having an unusual number of very old people. In 2013, demographers Michel Poulain, Anne Herm and Gianni Pes named four areas where they considered exceptional longevity verified: Ogliastra in Sardinia, Okinawa in Japan, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and the island of Ikaria in Greece.

The data are debated. Demographer Saul Newman argued in a preprint that extreme-age records around the world cluster in places with poverty, short average lifespans and missing birth certificates, which points to clerical errors and pension fraud. He also points to Japan, where in 2010 more than 230,000 registered centenarians turned out to be missing, dead or clerical errors. Researchers who studied the Blue Zones replied that their ages were checked against civil and church records and genealogies, and that the preprint mixes up data from other places with theirs. As of the version we read, Newman’s paper was still a preprint.

Our take: treat the Blue Zones as an interesting story, not as proof. The habits linked to them (plants, beans, movement through the day, close communities, little smoking) are the same ones the large studies above support, so you do not need the Blue Zones to be right to act on them.

Do longevity supplements work?

For living longer, the evidence in humans is thin. The National Institute on Aging warns that ads may say a product will help you live longer, but that there is “little, if any, science supporting these claims”, and that large doses of antioxidant supplements will not prevent chronic disease and can even be harmful. In 2022 the US Preventive Services Task Force found the evidence insufficient to recommend multivitamins or most single nutrients for preventing heart disease or cancer, and recommended against beta-carotene and vitamin E supplements for that purpose.

The same caution applies to newer products sold as anti-aging. Before you buy, ask whether there is a large human trial with fewer deaths or less disease as the result, not a study in mice or a change in a blood marker. Supplements do have a place when a blood test shows a real deficiency: see how much vitamin D you need, and our entry on omega-3 fatty acids for when fish is off the menu.

Start here: one thing for tomorrow

Put a 30-minute brisk walk in your calendar at the same time every day this week, and walk it with someone if you can. That covers movement and social contact in one habit. If you smoke, stopping is the biggest single step, at any age. Next week, add a pot of lentil or bean soup and swap your everyday cooking fat for olive oil.

Recipes for a longevity way of eating

Each recipe has ingredients in grams and nutrition per serving:

• Red lentil soup with lemon
• Fasolada: Greek white bean soup
• Chickpea and spinach stew
• Mediterranean mackerel stew with tomatoes and olives
• Baked salmon with root vegetables
• Warm lentil salad with roasted carrots and feta
• Kale, apple and walnut salad
• No-added-sugar granola with nuts and seeds

FAQ

What is the best diet for longevity?

No single diet has been proven best, but the Mediterranean pattern has the strongest evidence: mostly vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains and nuts, olive oil as the main fat, fish often, and little processed meat and sugar. In the PREDIMED trial it cut heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths by about 30% compared with a low-fat diet.

How many steps a day do you need to live longer?

In a meta-analysis of 15 cohorts, the lower risk of death levelled off at about 6,000-8,000 steps a day for adults aged 60 and over and about 8,000-10,000 for younger adults. Fewer steps still help: risk fell with every step up from the least active group.

Is it too late to start at 50 or 60?

No. In the British doctors study, quitting smoking at 50 gained about 6 years of life expectancy and quitting at 60 about 3. Activity, sleep and diet also matter at any age, and the step counts linked to the lowest risk are lower for people over 60.

Is red wine good for longevity?

No. A 2023 meta-analysis of 107 cohort studies found that light drinkers did not have a lower risk of death than people who never drank, and WHO Europe states that no level of alcohol is safe for health. If you do not drink, there is no health reason to start.

Do anti-aging supplements work?

There is little evidence that any supplement helps healthy people live longer. The National Institute on Aging says there is little, if any, science behind such claims, and the US Preventive Services Task Force found the evidence for multivitamins insufficient. Supplements make sense mainly for a deficiency confirmed by a test.

Are the Blue Zones real?

Researchers identified four Blue Zones in 2013, but the age data have been challenged in a preprint that links extreme-age records to errors and pension fraud. Blue Zones researchers reject that critique. The habits linked to these places match what large studies support anyway.

How much sleep do you need for a long life?

The National Institute on Aging advises seven to nine hours a night with a regular schedule. A meta-analysis of 16 studies linked both short and long sleep with higher mortality, although these are associations, not proof of cause.

Related

• Mediterranean diet (encyclopedia entry)
• Mediterranean diet for beginners: foods, 7-day plan and recipes
• Mediterranean diet: benefits and risks, what the research says
• Anti-inflammatory diet meal plan for 7 days
• Which foods reduce inflammation naturally?
• Gut health foods: what to eat for a healthy gut
• Why sleep is the cornerstone of a healthy lifestyle
• How much vitamin D do you need?
• DASH diet
• White beans
• Blueberries
• Tomatoes

Sources

1. Li Y, Pan A, Wang DD, et al. Impact of healthy lifestyle factors on life expectancies in the US population. Circulation. 2018;138(4):345-355. doi.org
2. Estruch R, et al. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts. N Engl J Med. 2018;378(25):e34. doi.org
3. Trichopoulou A, Costacou T, Bamia C, Trichopoulos D. Adherence to a Mediterranean diet and survival in a Greek population. N Engl J Med. 2003;348(26):2599-2608. doi.org
4. Wang DD, Li Y, Bhupathiraju SN, et al. Fruit and vegetable intake and mortality: results from 2 prospective cohort studies of US men and women and a meta-analysis of 26 cohort studies. Circulation. 2021;143(17):1642-1654. doi.org
5. World Health Organization. Healthy diet. Fact sheet, 26 January 2026. who.int
6. Bull FC, Al-Ansari SS, et al. World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Br J Sports Med. 2020;54(24):1451-1462. doi.org
7. World Health Organization. Physical activity. Fact sheet. who.int
8. Paluch AE, Bajpai S, Bassett DR, et al. Daily steps and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts. Lancet Public Health. 2022;7(3):e219-e228. doi.org
9. Cappuccio FP, D’Elia L, Strazzullo P, Miller MA. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep. 2010;33(5):585-592. doi.org
10. National Institute on Aging. What do we know about healthy aging? Reviewed 23 February 2022. nia.nih.gov
11. Doll R, Peto R, Boreham J, Sutherland I. Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years’ observations on male British doctors. BMJ. 2004;328(7455):1519. doi.org
12. World Health Organization. Tobacco. Fact sheet, 26 June 2026. who.int
13. Zhao J, Stockwell T, et al. Association between daily alcohol intake and risk of all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analyses. JAMA Netw Open. 2023. doi.org
14. WHO Regional Office for Europe. No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health. 4 January 2023. who.int
15. Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Med. 2010;7(7):e1000316. doi.org
16. Global BMI Mortality Collaboration. Body-mass index and all-cause mortality: individual-participant-data meta-analysis of 239 prospective studies in four continents. Lancet. 2016;388(10046):776-786. doi.org
17. World Health Organization. Hypertension. Fact sheet, 25 September 2025. who.int
18. Poulain M, Herm A, Pes G. The Blue Zones: areas of exceptional longevity around the world. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research. 2013;11:87-108. econpapers.repec.org
19. Newman SJ. Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud. bioRxiv preprint, version 4. doi.org
20. Pes G, Rosero-Bixby L, Chrysohoou C, Stefanadis C, Willcox BJ, Willcox C. The science behind Blue Zones (reply to critics), published on the Blue Zones founder’s website. danbuettner.com
21. National Institute on Aging. Dietary supplements for older adults. Reviewed 23 April 2021. nia.nih.gov
22. US Preventive Services Task Force. Vitamin, mineral, and multivitamin supplementation to prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer: preventive medication. 21 June 2022. uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

This page is for information only and is not medical or dietary advice.