I just took a great little Life Expectancy test at http://www.poodwaddle.com/realage.swf It asks you various questions about your health, life style, family history, and then computes your life expectancy. In my case it turned out to be 82 years, which isn't bad. I actually expect it to be longer, potentially 100, because of medical science progress over the next 30 years.
I was curious to know which factors effected the results the most, either positively or negatively. Compared to the average person, I expected the moderately intense exercise I do (jogging) would be a real benefit. It only added 1.4 years to my life expectancy. My diet was slightly more important, adding 1.8 years. The biggest single benefit was that I am happily married, which added 2.0 years to my life expectancy.
The biggest reductions? Sleeping only 6 hours per night (or less) on the average knocked down my life expectancy by 2 years. Hmmm... getting 8 hours of sleep per night would actually improve my life expectancy more than all the exercise I do. That's unexpected, and good to know.
By far, the single biggest detractor was the amount of driving I do - over 20,000 miles per year. This dropped by life expectancy by a whopping 4 years. Ouch! That was at least double any other single factor in the entire test. Now I know where my greatest health risks lies.
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So how are you going to reduce the amount of driving so we can enjoy having you around another four years, Mike?
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