Diet improvement at age 45 can extend life by two to three years, says study

This study attempts to answer the classic question of whether lifestyle choices, particularly diet, can modify our genetic predisposition to live longer. Researchers analyzed data from a large UK study, with information on diet and genetic characteristics in over 100,000 participants. After a follow-up period of about 10 years, they find that those who follow a healthy diet, defined in five different ways, have a lower risk of premature death, regardless of whether their genes are more or less “longevous.”

This study highlights the importance of a healthy diet in achieving a longer life.

This is a well-executed study based on a database containing high-quality information on thousands of participants. It was already well known that following certain types of diets rich in plant-based foods, such as the Mediterranean diet, was associated with lower mortality, but the contribution of this study is to present the benefits of these diets in a positive and more understandable way for the population, i.e., in terms of years of life gained by following these diets. The main messages of the study are as follows:

• Following an optimal Mediterranean diet (eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, preferring whole grains over refined grains, and consuming mainly plant-based proteins, while minimizing the consumption of sugary drinks and other products rich in sugar and/or salt) can increase life expectancy by up to 2-3 years in people aged 45 (compared to people who follow a very poor diet).
• If it is not possible to follow an optimal diet, improving it a little is better than nothing, as this can also prolong life (see Figure 3).
• It is never too late to improve your diet, as following an optimal diet at age 80 is associated with a gain of up to two years of life for men, compared to those who have a very poor diet at that age, and up to one year for women (see Figure 3).
• The next step is to investigate how much of this gain in life expectancy occurs in good health (healthy life expectancy).

This study analyses the association between different dietary patterns and longevity. It is not a novel study. Much research has been done on this topic, and it is already known that healthy diets, such as the Mediterranean diet, contribute to a longer life expectancy. The most important thing today is that we can have a disease-free life expectancy, meaning that older people are healthy, do not have diseases, and do not consume high levels of medication. A healthy diet contributes to this, as do physical activity, healthy sleep, not smoking, and other healthy lifestyle choices.

The article reinforces what we already knew about the subject. It is not an experimental study that would provide a higher level of evidence. The advantage is that the sample size studied from the UK Biobank is large.