Medical researchers continually harp on the benefits of lifestyle change. Living habits form the basis for nearly every preventive medicine recommendation because they are easy to do and research has shown they are directly involved in making us healthy. We clearly know that adequate rest, exercise, and a proper diet are the starting point for anyone seeking a better quality of life.
A researcher from Australia has decided to take the benefits of lifestyle changes to a new level. He has devised a program that he claims will add a year to your life. A YEAR! He says that “Minimal lifestyle changes such as adding 5 minutes of sleep, 2 minutes of moderate activity (exercise), and half a serving of vegetables every day will extend your life by one year.”
At baseline, the people in the study “slept 5.5 hours a night, logged 7.3 minutes of daily moderate activity, and had a diet quality score of 36 out of 100.” From there they determined the bare minimum necessary to improve lifespan and quality of life. The bare minimum turned out to be the activities in bold type above. People who added 5 minutes of sleep, 2 minutes of moderate exercise, and eating a half serving of vegetables to their baseline every day added one year to their life.
Those folks who sleep 7.2-8 hours a night, are active for 43 minutes a day, and have a high quality diet score in the 60-70 range, lived more than 9 years longer than peers who did not make these lifestyle changes. To achieve success, however, you must combine all three goals and not rely on just one of them. If you ignore changes in diet and exercise and rely solely on sleep to add a year’s longevity, it will require 25 extra minutes a night.
This sounds fairly simple, but success requires a long term daily committment. You won’t achieve your goal by haphazard, inconsistent adherence to the plan. I’m not sure how they were able to determine you could add a year to your life by making these changes, because, no one knows when they are going to die, in the first place. So how do you know you’ve added a year? But that’s what they did and what they claim, so we’ll continue to follow the recommendation and see if we live that extra year!
Reference: O’May L. The Bare Minimum You Need to Add a Year to Your Life. medscape.com 2026 May 20.
