Study: How to live to age 90

BOSTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Five modifiable factors can give a 70-year-old man a 54 percent probability of living to age 90, U.S. researchers found.

The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, also found five factors that add up to an unhealthy lifestyle, which reduces that probability to 4 percent.

"Smoking, diabetes, obesity and hypertension significantly reduced the likelihood of a 90-year life span, while regular vigorous exercise substantially improved it," the study authors said in a statement. "Furthermore, men with a life span of 90 or more years also had better physical function, mental well-being and self-perceived health in late life compared with men who died at a younger age. Adverse factors associated with reduced longevity -- smoking, obesity and sedentary lifestyle -- also were significantly associated with poorer functional status in elderly years."

Dr. Laurel Yates of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston and colleagues studied a group of 2,357 men -- with an average age of 72 -- who were participants in the Physician's Health Study beginning in 1981 to 1984. Of these, 970 men lived to age 90 by the time the study ended in 2006.

The researchers found the probability of living to age 90 was reduced 44 percent by a sedentary lifestyle, 36 percent by high blood pressure, 26 percent by obesity and 22 percent by smoking. Having three factors together -- such as sedentary lifestyle, obesity and diabetes -- reduced the probability of living to age 90 to 14 percent.