12 Things That Can Shorten Your Life

Want to look 10 years into the future and see how your health is holding up? Thanks to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), you can. They developed a checklist that fairly accurately predicts a senior’s chance of surviving another decade. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, this list provides a unique opportunity for patients and physicians to work together to lessen key health risk factors and improve seniors’ quality of life.

The UCSF analysis used a nationally representative cohort of U.S. adults over age 50. Point values were assigned to each factor in the mortality index (the higher the points, the worse the risk). A risk score was then calculated for each participant based on their self-reported health indicators. In the end, there was a dramatic difference: Participants with no risk factors had a 2.8 percent chance of dying over 10 years, while those with the most risks had a 96 percent chance of dying.

Although a single health risk factor isn’t enough to predict longevity, researchers caution, a host of attributes taken together can say something powerful about your future health. See how your risk factors stack up.

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