Quantifying life style impact on lifespan

An healthy diet, physical activity and avoiding dangerous habits such as smoking are effective ways of increasing the health span. Although a relevant part of humanity still suffer from malnutrition, especially children, the majority of world population is now dying as a result of non communicable diseases. Overweight and obesity significantly increase the relative risk for the most relevant non communicable diseases: cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes and some cancers. Childhood overweight, seems to additionally increase the likelihood for disease in the future adult also trough epigenetic mechanisms. This worrisome trend defined by many as globesity will deeply impact society unless preventive strategies are put into effect. Researchers on the basic biology of aging have clearly established that all short lived animal models tested benefit of an increased life span when the diet is calorie restricted. Although similar experiment carried on rhesus monkeys, a longer lived species more closely related to human, yielded mixed result, overall the available scientific data suggests to keep body max index in the “normal” range to increase our chance for an healthy life span. This can be successfully achieved both by healthy diet and physical activity. In this review we will try to quantify the relative impact of life style choices on life span.