How long will I live?

What your result means and what to do next

Your range is the average for people with your answers, worked out from a published US study. It isn't a date, since people with the same answers die at very different ages. The US average beside it is everyone your age and sex, smokers and marathon runners alike.

The habit costing you the most years is where to start, because it's the biggest change your answers leave open. If you smoke, that's quitting, and free coaching is at 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669). If the five habits are in place, the next years come from getting fitter and stronger, so take the floor test. Then pick one more step from the simple plan, keep it for three months and come back to see your range move.

How it's worked out

The average for your age and sex is the 2024 US life table from the National Center for Health Statistics: your age plus the years the table expects at that age.

Your estimate uses the five habits from Li and others (Circulation, 2018), who followed 123,219 US health professionals for up to 34 years: never smoking, a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9, at least 30 minutes a day of moderate or vigorous activity, a diet in the top 40 percent, and moderate drinking. People with more of the habits died at lower rates: 0.79, 0.61, 0.47, 0.35, 0.26 times the rate of people with none, for one to five habits.

The paper turned those ratios into years by applying them to national death rates. This calculator does the same with the 2024 table. The no-habits group's death rate is set at 1.7 times the table's for women and 1.6 for men, which gives back the paper's own figure at 50: 29 more years for women and 25.5 for men. With all five habits it gives 41.4 and 38.6, against the paper's 43.1 and 37.6.

The range runs the paper's 95% intervals at both ends, and rounds out to whole years.

The habit costing you the most

Each missing habit is worked out on its own, from the paper's hazard ratio for that habit with the others held level, through the same table. The years overlap, so they're never added up. For smokers, quitting always comes first, with the years Jha and others measured in 202,248 US adults: about 10 for quitting at 25 to 34, 9 at 35 to 44 and 6 at 45 to 54. From 55, the nearest measured figure is quitting at 60 in British doctors, about 3 years (Doll and others, 2004).

Drinking

The paper counted 5 to 15 g of alcohol a day for women and 5 to 30 g for men as the low-risk habit, so people who didn't drink scored as missing it. This calculator counts no more than 7 drinks a week for women and 14 for men, none included. When researchers kept former drinkers apart from lifelong non-drinkers, light drinkers had no lower risk (Zhao and others, 2023, 107 studies). If you don't drink, there's no reason to start.

Healthy years

The same team measured how many years after 50 people lived free of diabetes, heart disease and cancer (Li and others, BMJ, 2020). With no habits that was 75% of the years for women and 75% for men, and with four or five, 84% and 79%. The rail splits your years by that share between 40 and 65, near the age it was measured from.

What it can't know

It's an average for people with your answers, and the habits study followed US nurses and other health professionals, who may differ from you in ways the answers don't cover. It knows nothing about your health conditions, your family or your genes. If you have a diagnosis, your doctor's view outranks it. Fitness sits beside the estimate, from a different study, and is never added to it.