Over indulgence during the holiday season can take away years from our lives, says a new study.

On the other hand, taking just one drink, eating lots of fruits and vegetables and exercising regularly can add two hours to our lives.
Professor David Spiegelhalter, who is a professor of biostatistics and Winton professor for the public understanding of risk, thought it is necessary to discover a simple way of showing the impact of our every day habits on life expectancy, so that scientific communication of chronic lifestyle risks are not misinterpreted or be potentially misleading.
He termed half hour of adult life expectancy as "micro life" and explains that 'A daily loss or gain of 30 minutes can be termed a microlife, because one million half hours (57 years) roughly corresponds to a lifetime of adult exposure'. Taking information from population–related data he calculated that a micro life may be "lost" due to certain lifestyle habits such as smoking two cigarettes, being overweight by 5 kilos, consuming 2-3 alcoholic drink or eating a burger each day or watching television for two hours per day!
Further, the professor proposed that micro lives can be "gained" by maintaining a disciplined life which includes consuming just one alcoholic drink a day, eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, exercising regularly, and taking statins.
The impact of demographic factors such as gender and nationality can also be expressed in "microlives".
These evaluations however have their own limits as they are approximate estimates and are based on a variety of assumptions.
Source-Medindia