Living longer though math? - Exercise 5+ days a week!
Increase in healthy lifespan for a otherwise healthy 50 year old male with exercise
So there is a healthy life span calculator going around the social media feeds (article here) from the Goldenson Center at the University of Conneticut. The group focuses on actuarial science - i.e. using data to set insurance rates, and have decided to "develop a rigourous measure of quality of life". They also linked it to a simple web based "Healthy life expectancy calculator" - so you can answer some questions and it will guess if you will die in 5 years or in a 50 years. The calculator asks simple questions that make sense in a questionnaire until you start thinking about definitions - so it's best to not think too much about it, and just answer. - the questions are: sex, age weight, height, education, annual income, exercise frequency, current health level, whether or not you have type 2 diabetes, diet quality, sleep amount, smoker or not, diving history and alcohol consumption.
Given this calculator, what changes can we make to increase our healthy life span according to the data of the insurance company?
So I plugged in my numbers - I am apparently going to live to 101, with the last 2.3 years being unhealthy - , and started changing them, to see which changes had the greatest effect -in this case to reduce my lifespan.
If I took up smoking it would cost me 2.5 years - which seems low to me, as I think it affects other things.
I drink 2-3 drinks a week - or a bit less than once a week, - if it was 3-7 drinks a week it wold cost me 1.1 years, and 8+ drinks a week would cost me 3.4 years, wheres going tea total would gain me nothing. Apparently I drink little enough to be in the noise of the data.
If instead of sleeping 8+ hours a night I got 5-8 hours, it would cost me 1.5 years again, and if I reduced it to < 5 hours that would cost me 3.2 years of living!
Type 2 diabetes would cost me 3 years, but I assume that would come with other factors.
I'm currently getting a lot of exercise in (>5 days a week I do something) but 3-4 days a week would cost me 3 years, 1-2 days a week would cost me 4.7 years and rarely exercising would cost me 6.8 years, and never exercising 7.7 years.
I currently rate my health as very good (i'm 49 and can run a 5K) but not excellent (I can't run it fast!) but if I were to rate my current health as fair it would cost me 1.3 years, or poor 1.8 years (excellent would get me an additional 0.7 years.- need to work on the 5K)
I rate my diet as very good - but I don't know how to measure - but home cooking nothing deep fried, not much sugar, no sodas, protein and vegetables and fruit for lunch, and Dinner with my family. I think I have to give up chocolate for excellent. If I was from New Orleans, an excellent diet would mean something else, that probably tastes amazing. but if I rated my diet good I would lose 1.5 years, fair 3.2 years, poor 4.2 years, and if it improved to excellent I would gain 2.5 years!
I can't really change my level of schooling or my income - and I'm not sure if I changed them at my age that it would have the same effect on my health as someone getting that education at a younger age - so I won't worry about those. I could however realistically lose 10bs, or a max of 20lbs - neither of which seem to make any difference in my expected lifespan, and neither does adding 20lbs (is it broken?) but adding 100lbs would only cost me a year - not sure I believe that. However, adding 100lbs, type 2 diabetes, only fair perceived health, smoking, exercising never, a poor diet, 5-8 hours of sleep, 8+ drinks a week loses me 27.3 years - so you see it does have an opinion on the major things.
What have we learned from playing with this? What does it mean when the doctor says eat well and exercise?
1. The insurance industry has data saying you have to exercise 5+ days a week, and that is significantly better than 3-4 days a week, and ~8 years better than no exercise at all. I plotted the differences on the chart above.
2. The insurance industry says diet is important, and it should be excellent, This is probably right, but working out what that means in detail is almost impossible. Still salads, vegetables, proteins, carbs, rather than too much dessert?
3. Have enough sleep - this is probably to do with stress - but I wonder about my waking life being 1 hour less a day, being equivalent to a year or two. It does however seem to be a very enjoyable change to make.
4. Perceiving your health as good - I'm not sure I believe too much in positive thinking so much as avoiding the power of negative thinking (thus outrageous optimism ala Mr Money Mustache - I do have a lifespan calculator telling me I am going to life until 101 though, so thats good). Still if you think your health is poor and you need to something about it, it probably is and you probably should! Presumably people who have told the insurance company this in a questionnaire, were not lying.
I'm not sure what the other takeaways are, except that i suspect that not so good inputs need to compound on each other to make things bad. - For example if you smoke, but do everything else well, it will cost you a calculator estimated 1.5 years, but if you add that to a bunch of other things, then the numbers obviously get worse. If I set most of the inputs to least healthy I lose 20 years (no exercise, poor current health, type 2 diabetes, poor diet, poor perception of health, smoker and 8+ drinks a week). Note there is a driving accident option, and 2+ accidents a year would cost me 4 years - so avoid the long commute.
Have a play and thanks to the Goldenson center for doing this.