Quit smoking, drink in moderation, eat right, and exercise regularly.

Get moving as if your life depended on it.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—We spend billions on creams, potions, lotions, and elixirs that promise to make us look and feel younger. But what good is all that if a handful of everyday bad habits are busy accelerating our aging process? A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that four unhealthy behaviors—smoking, lack of physical activity, poor diet, and high alcohol consumption—can push you to the end of your lifespan more than a decade ahead of schedule.

"The main message from this research is that lifestyle matters to your health, and that you don’t need to go to the extremes to benefit from lifestyle changes," says lead researcher Elisabeth Kvaavik, PhD, of the University of Oslo in Norway. "What is required is to eat three or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day, exercise for 30 minutes four times a week, quit smoking, and be moderate in your alcohol intake. Do this and you’ll likely live longer, enjoy better health during those years, and feel better all around. And even if you don’t manage to quit all four poor behaviors, quitting two or three can make an important impact on your health."

THE DETAILS: In the study, Norwegian researchers interviewed nearly 5,000 adults in the mid-1980s. They gathered data on exercise, smoking, and drinking tendencies, as well as fruit and vegetable consumption. Each participant was given a health behavior score, receiving one point for each unhealthy behavior, defined as less than two hours a week of physical activity, fewer than three servings of fruits and vegetables a day, smoking, and drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week for women and more than 21 units a week for men.

Researchers monitored the group for 20 years, during which time 1,080 people died (431 from cardiovascular disease, 318 from cancer, and 331 from other causes). Compared to those with no bad health behaviors, people with two, three, or four of the unhealthy behaviors were increasingly more likely to die. Those with all four were three-and-a-half times more likely to do so. Looked at another way, the researchers found the death risk of those having all four bad behaviors was essentially equal to that of someone 12 years older with no unhealthy behaviors. Rather alarmingly, around 30 percent of the study participants engaged in three or four of the poor health behaviors, according to Kvaavik.