A new study revealed that talking exercise, not drinking too much alcohol, eating enough fruits and vegetables and not smoking could add up to 14 years to people’s life.

The University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council in the English county of Norfolk between 1993 and 2006 carried out the study.

Researchers studied records of 20,000 British people aged 45 to 79 who filled out health questionnaires. They showed that a person’s social class or body mass index had nothing to do with that person’s life expectancy. Participants did not suffer from cancer or heart disease at the start of the study.

After factoring in age, Professor Kay-Tee Khaw a gerontologist at Cambridge University and colleagues discovered that over an average of 11 years, people who undertook none of all the four healthy habits were four times more likely to have died than those who adopted all four. These people had on average the same risk of dying as people 14 years older in the group, the researchers said.

“The results strongly suggest that these four achievable lifestyle changes could have a marked improvement on the health of middle-aged and older people, which is particularly important given the ageing population in the UK and other European countries,” the study concluded.

Moderate drinking was defined as between one-half and seven pints of beer or glasses of wine, weekly. Having the right amount of fruits and vegetables meant eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, which can bring the right amount of Vitamin C to the body.

“We've known that individually, measures such as not smoking and exercising can have an impact upon longevity, but this is the first time we have looked at them altogether. And we also found that social class and BMI - body mass index - really did not have a role to play. It means a large proportion of the population really could feel health benefits through moderate changes," said Professor Kay-Tee Khaw, who led the research.

The results of the study were welcomed by the health campaigners.

"This is good news and shows that by living a healthy life, people can reduce their risk of dying from heart and circulatory disease," said Judy O'Sullivan of the British Heart Foundation, according to BBC News.

The study was a part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, conducted across ten European countries, billed as the largest study of diet and health ever undertaken.

The study was published in the journal The Public Library of Science Medicine and appeared online January 8 in the research journal PLoS Biology.