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The Huffington Post | By Healthy Living Staff Posted: 09/23/2013 9:00 am EDT | Updated: 09/23/2013 10:41 am EDT
Want to add more and better years to your life? Now is the time.
We're living longer than ever: The average American born in 2013 will be alive nearly four years longer than someone born 20 years ago. But until recently, it wasn't clear if the years we've added to our lives were good-quality years.
A recent study from the University of Massachusetts Medical School starts to answer that question. Researchers found that today, 25 year olds can expect to live "2.4 more years of a healthy life" and 65 year olds can look forward to 1.7 extra healthy years than people who lived two decades back.
However, those extra years are far from guaranteed. Childhood obesity and its associated diseases threaten to reverse the upward tick of American life expectancy, which is currently calculated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be just shy of 79 years.
Much of making it to your 100th birthday is beyond your control, as longevity is partly dictated by genetics and the medical history and health habits of your parents and grandparents. But there are also a handful (okay, a lot) of lifespan-enhancing practices that you can adopt today -- like taking your allotted vacation days, eating more leafy greens and getting enough sleep.
We scoured the research and sought advice from centenarians themselves. And while not all of these life-expanders are doable for everyone ("Be born in Japan," for example!), there is so much you can do to improve your odds of a long and healthful old age.
Find out what you're already doing right and where you can still improve in our list of100 ways to live to 100
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