How to add healthy years to your Life: A guide to healthspan, lifespan and aging well
Americans are living longer than ever, but many are spending their final decade or more managing chronic disease, pain and cognitive decline. That gap between how long you live and how long you live well is what researchers call the difference between lifespan and healthspan. And closing it has become one of the most talked-about goals in preventive medicine, driving new frameworks from the American Heart Association and fresh guidance from longevity researchers at Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern and UCLA.
The good news: the habits that extend your healthspan tend to extend your lifespan too. Here’s what the research says, and what experts recommend you actually do about it.
What Healthspan Means and How It Differs From Lifespan
Lifespan is the simpler of the two measures. It’s the number of years between birth and death and in the United States, it has grown dramatically. As Harvard Health notes, a newborn in 1900 could expect to live about 47 years. Today that figure is closer to 79, thanks to improvements in sanitation, antibiotics, vaccines, safer childbirth and emergency care.
Healthspan is more personal. Harvard Health describes it as “the stretch of life when you’re reasonably free of disabling disease, pain and serious limitation” the period when you can still do the things that make life feel like your life. And healthspans, the outlet notes, have not kept pace with lifespans. Many people now live a decade or more with multiple chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, chronic lung disease, arthritis and cognitive decline.
“Healthspan means living better, not just longer,” Dr. Corey Rovzar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Prevention Research Center within the university’s School of Medicine in California, told Heart.org. “We’re talking about those years that are free from any significant chronic disease or any significant disability that might affect one’s quality of life.”
U.S. Life Expectancy by the Numbers
Life expectancy in the United States, according to the CDC, currently stands at 79.0 years for both sexes combined. Broken out by sex, males can expect 76.5 years and females 81.4 years. Those figures capture only the lifespan side of the equation they say nothing about how many of those years will be spent in good health.
Healthspan isn’t calculated for individuals either. It’s measured for “an average person in the population,” said Dr. Norrina Allen, vice chair for research in the department of preventive medicine and director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine in the Center for Epidemiology and Population Health, both at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Still, Allen notes that working to extend your healthspan will likely lengthen your lifespan as well. “The factors that help prevent the onset of disease are also highly related to preventing your death from those diseases.”
Life’s Essential 8 and the Habits That Extend Healthy Years
Allen helped write a 2022 report from the American Heart Association introducing Life’s Essential 8, a framework outlining eight key health behaviors and risk factors that support cardiovascular health. Research has linked following these recommendations to a lower risk of chronic disease, healthier aging, and increases in both lifespan and healthspan.
The framework encourages
- Avoiding tobacco
- Staying physically active
- Getting sufficient sleep
- Eating a nutritious diet centered on whole foods plenty of fruits and vegetables, lean protein, nuts and seeds, and healthy fats such as olive oil
- Maintaining a healthy weight
- Keeping cholesterol within recommended ranges
- Keeping blood pressure within recommended ranges
- Keeping blood sugar within recommended ranges
The American Heart Association also recommends limiting alcohol intake, noting that excessive drinking is associated with a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, breast cancer and other serious health conditions.
Allen added that healthy aging depends on more than physical health alone. Supportive family relationships, good mental well-being, access to quality health care and strong social connections also help extend healthspan. “These additional factors lay the groundwork for maintaining good health behaviors and ideal clinical factors,” she said.
How to Start Closing the Gap Between Healthspan and Lifespan
Adopting every habit at once can feel overwhelming, Rovzar said. She recommends starting with one or two manageable changes and gradually building healthier routines. “Think intentionally about what you can do today,” she said. “Add greens to your meal. Walk a little bit longer. Those things add up. People approach lifestyle changes as all or nothing, but we need to shift that mentality to recognizing that every little bit counts.”
Stress deserves particular attention. “Stress reduction should be on everybody’s list,” said Dr. Linda Ercoli, a geriatric psychologist and interim director of the UCLA Longevity Center at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “Chronic stress is detrimental to health,” she said, citing a study that found women with stressful jobs had a 40% higher rate of heart disease than those without.
“Everybody needs to relax,” Ercoli said. “If you’re under chronic stress, you should be practicing this every day, sometimes twice a day.” She also stressed the value of a consistent sleep schedule, more social connection and avoiding processed food.
Exercise, the Brain and Long-Term Cognitive Health
Physical activity may be the single most versatile tool for extending healthspan, because its benefits reach well beyond the heart. Ercoli said exercise “is great for people’s cognition of all ages, and really good for people with impaired cognitive abilities.” She added that “there’s evidence to suggest that aerobic exercise may protect the brain and delay the onset of dementia.”
That pairs with the broader message from Allen and Rovzar incremental change compounds. A daily walk, a few more servings of vegetables, a better bedtime, a phone call to a friend none of these look dramatic on their own, but together they shape the trajectory of how many good years follow the ones already lived.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
