Small Lifestyle Changes May Extend Life, UK Study Reveals

January 22, 2026 | 02:07 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Small improvements in sleep, exercise, and diet have the potential to extend a person's life, according to a recent study in the UK. The research, published on January 13 in the journal eClinicalMedicine, concluded that combining minor changes across several lifestyle aspects can provide greater health benefits than improving a single factor in isolation.

The study analyzed data from nearly 60,000 participants from the UK Biobank, a database that collects medical information and lifestyle data from adults in the UK. Researchers linked the participants' sleep habits, physical activity, and diet to their estimated age and health conditions through statistical modeling.

The results showed that individuals who slept five minutes longer per day, added two minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, and consumed an additional half portion of vegetables daily tended to have a one-year longer lifespan compared to the group with the worst habits in the lowest 5 percent of the cohort.

However, this finding does not mean that these small changes definitively guarantee a longer life. "By itself, this study does not prove that these habits improve health," said Stephen Burgess, a statistician from the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study, as quoted from a Live Science report on January 21, 2026.

"They model what might happen to our life span if changing these factors does improve health," he continued.

The lead author of the study, Nicholas Koemel, stated that the combined impact of these lifestyle improvements is greater than if they were pursued separately. "Healthy habits work better as a package," he said.

According to him, each behavior is interconnected and influences the others. "Each one of our behaviors has an interlinking impact on what we do. If we have a poor night's sleep, we oftentimes eat differently, we move differently. And we see that across all of these different behaviors."

Koemel stressed that the approach of making small changes across various lifestyle aspects could be a more realistic alternative than pursuing extreme changes. Based on statistical modeling, participants with the most optimal combination of habits, at least 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise, seven to eight hours of sleep per day, and a healthy diet, are estimated to live nine years longer overall and enjoy an additional nine years in good health compared to the 3 percent of participants with the worst performance.

However, the researchers emphasized that cohort studies have limitations. Sleep and exercise habits were only measured over a short period, while diet was assessed once at the beginning of the study. Other factors, such as economic conditions and living environments, also have the potential to affect results but were not fully measured in this study.

Burgess considers the main message of this study to remain relevant. "The overall message that small changes in these factors are likely to be beneficial is probably correct. But whether the exact numbers are accurate or not is less clear," Burgess said.

Read: Study Finds 5 Minutes of Daily Exercise Cuts Death Risk

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