A simulation study of the impact of population-wide lifestyle modifications on life expectancy in the Chinese population

It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smoke quit smoking, excessive alcohol use was reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the possibility to realize these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations.

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Journal
Nature Communications
Published
2025-11-07
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-64824-x
Primary Topic
Health disparities and outcomes
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

A simulation study of the impact of population-wide lifestyle modifications on life expectancy in the Chinese population

Iain Turnbull, Xiaoyu Chang, Daniel Avery, Fang Liu et al.
Nature Communications
Health disparities and outcomes
article

A simulation study of the impact of population-wide lifestyle modifications on life expectancy in the Chinese population

Iain Turnbull, Xiaoyu Chang, Daniel Avery, Fang Liu, Huiming Luo, Charlotte Clarke, Kai Kang, Qiufen Sun, Yuan Cao, Haiping Duan, Yajing Zang, Ling Yang, Andri Iona, Yinqi Ding, Jiaqiu Liu, Pek Kei Im, Jian Lan, Dianjianyi Sun, Jie Yang, Lei Fan, Zengchang Pang, Caixia Dong, Dongmei Yu, Yuxiang Yang, Johnathan Clarke, Yun Liu, Canqing Yu, Yan Lu, Enke Mao, Dan Schmidt, Hao Zhang, Yulu Qin, Xin Ping Xu, Xukui Zhang, Sam Morris, Alfred Pozarickij, Donghui Jin, Xia Wu, Pang Yao, Robert W. Clarke, Xianping Wu, Hannah Fry, Quan Kang, Christiana Kartsonaki, Maria Kakkoura, Zhenzhen Lu, Iona Y. Millwood, Ningyu Chen, Tingting Ou, Mingqiang Yuan, Changping Xie, Derrick Bennett, Saredo Said, Jingchao Liu, Ruth Boxall, Huimei Li, Aiyu Tang, Faqing Chen, Baihan Wang, Hubert Lam, Jun Lv, Zhenyuan Wu, Neil Wright, Lazaros Belbasis, Huaidong Du, Tingping Zhu, Yuanjie Pang, Ruying Hu, Liuping Wei, Yuan Bo Peng, Wei Sun, Ming Wu, Shixian Feng, Zhongxi Fu, Huarong Sun, Huizi Tian, Ahmed Edris Mohamed, Wei Jiang, Yaoming Zhai, Liangcai Ma, Xiaohui Sun, Hui Zhang, Lin Mei, Xiaojun Li, Libo Zhang, Chi Wang, Xiaolin Li, Ran Tao, Yiping Chen, Lin Wang, Jianwei Chen, Liming Li, Jun Zhang, Shuo Zhang, Feifei Li, Jianrong Jin, Qiang Sun, Zhengming Chen, Yihe Hu, Hao Wang, Tao Wang, Xiaofang Chen, Yanjie Li, Huilin Liu, Junzheng Wang, Sisi Wang, Xi Zhang, Liang Cheng, Shaojie Wang, Jian Su, Chao Liu, Zhendong Guo, James Hou-fu Liu, Xiaoping Wang, Chan Qu, Liyuan Zhou, Yin Li, Yilei Li, Xiao Han, Ka Hung Chan, Lingli Chen, Xiaoming Yang, Jinyi Zhou, Xiangyang Zheng, Pan He, Lifang Zhou, Li Pan, Xiaolan Ren, Xiaoyi Zhang, Wei Hou, Xiaoming Cui, Xiaocao Tian, Maxim Barnard, Rory Collins, Richárd Pető, Shanpeng Li, Can Hou, Paul Ryder, Qingmei Xia, Mohsen Mazidi, Shichun Yan, Hua Zhang, Maryanm Rahmati, Kaixu Xie, Simon Gilbert, Ruqin Gao, Yonglin Zhou, Feng Ning, Lin Kuang, Liyun Zhao, Dun Shen, Robin Walters, Ningmei Zhang, Qunhua Nie, Becky Stevens, Shukuan Wu, Yongmei Liu, Pei Pei
article en

Abstract

It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smoke quit smoking, excessive alcohol use was reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the possibility to realize these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations.

Nature CommunicationsVol. 16(1)
Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Peking University (CN), University of Oxford (GB), Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Xian Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Ministry of Education (RO), Office of Readiness and Response (US), Heilongjiang Center for Tuberculosis Control and Prevention (CN), Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Liu Zhou Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CN), Hainan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CN), China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CN), Zhejiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Guangxi Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CN), Qingdao Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Gansu Great Wall Electrical and Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CN), Henan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Gansu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CN), Nanjing Medical University (CN), Medical Research Council (GB)
University of Oxford, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, National Science and Technology Major Project
Openalex Percentile: Top 59%
Health disparities and outcomes
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