Bad Habits can AGE you by 12 years

Smoking tobacco, drinking too much, inactivity and poor diet are bad habits that can age humans by 12 years, a study suggests.

These bad habits can increase the risk of death and people who engage in them seem 12years older than people in the healthiest group. The healthiest group of people are those who never smoked and those who had quit, women who had fewer than two drinks daily, and men who had fewer than three, those who got at least two hours of physical activity weekly, and those who ate fruits and vegetables at least thrice daily.

Study participants were 4,886 British adults aged 18 and older, or 44 years old on average. They were randomly selected from participants in a separate nationwide British health survey. Study subjects were asked about various lifestyle habits only once, a potential limitation, but Kvaavik said those habits tend to be fairly stable in adulthood.

Death certificates were checked for the next 20 years. The most common causes of death included heart disease and cancer, both related to unhealthy lifestyles.

The findings don't mean that everyone who maintains a healthy lifestyle will live longer than those who don't, but it will increase the odds, Stevens said.

http://health.yahoo.com/news/ap/us_med_bad_habits_survival.html