Healthspan vs. Lifespan: What Is the Difference, and Which Is More Important?

Longevity is a hot-button topic in the health and fitness world these days, with countless people choosing to start a fitness program or make better choices in the kitchen with the goals of living longer and better. While these two ideas tend to go hand in hand in your mind, they are actually two separate concepts in the world of longevity research: healthspan vs. lifespan. 

Here, we’re explaining the difference between the two, where your focus should be (spoiler: it’s your healthspan!), and some of the steps you can take to improve it.

Let’s get started!

What is lifespan?

According to the Cleveland Clinic, lifespan refers specifically to how long you can live. The maximum human lifespan (right now, anyway) is just north of 120 years. Lifespan is slightly different from life expectancy, even though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. While lifespan refers to how long you can live, life expectancy refers to the average age to which a group of people are likely to survive. 

Many factors influence how long we live—some, like biology and genetics, are entirely out of our control. Others, such as our environment, healthcare access, and availability of nutritious food or clean water, are shaped by a mix of personal choices and larger systemic conditions. While not everyone starts from the same place, certain actions and decisions can still have a meaningful impact on long-term health.

What is healthspan?

Healthspan is a term that researchers are using to describe how long people can live without chronic conditions and age-related disabilities. After remaining stagnant for over 200 years, life expectancy has skyrocketed in the last century, thanks to advances in modern medicine, public health, and living standards. Therefore, longevity researchers have begun to turn their attention away from simply how long people are living to take a closer look at how long they are living well and free of diseases. 

Healthspan vs. lifespan: Key differences

Healthspan focuses on how long you are living healthily and free of any significant diseases or illnesses that would affect your quality of life, while lifespan is simply how long you are living. 

For example, remember Grandpa Joe from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?” He was old (96 years old in the book!), giving him quite a long lifespan, but he hadn’t left his shared bed in 20 years. We are never told why he was bedridden for so long, but it’s safe to say that he wasn’t particularly healthy for those two decades. So, while his lifespan was well into his 90s, his healthspan would be 20 years shorter.

Another key difference between lifespan and healthspan is that lifespan is a finite number, while healthspan isn’t exact. At this point, researchers are using the concept of healthspan more as a way to look at groups and communities of people and pinpoint factors that may be contributing to them living healthier longer than other similar groups of people. 

This leads to the final big difference between healthspan vs. lifespan. As we mentioned earlier, there are many factors that influence your lifespan that are out of your control. But—and this part is pretty exciting!—you have much more power over your healthspan than you do your lifespan. While your genetics and family history of illnesses will still play a role, there are so many steps you can take to improve your healthspan. More on these below.

Why healthspan may be more important than lifespan

Is your goal to live to be 95 years old, even if it means spending the last 15 years of your life seriously ill or disabled? Or, would you rather live as long as you can as well as you can, staying healthy, active, and engaged in the life you have always loved? We’re willing to bet that most people would choose the latter, which focuses on healthspan more than lifespan. 

According to recent estimates based on the average age that people are diagnosed with each of the most common serious diseases, people are living up to 20% of their lives (in most cases, the final 20%) unhealthy. However, if the medical industry and your personal choices focus on health, this can help you extend your healthspan (and potentially your lifespan, too). 

How to improve your healthspan: 4 tips

Unless you’re a longevity researcher, you likely don’t have much of a say in the steps that scientists and medical researchers are taking to improve healthspan. But there are changes you can make in your daily life that will help lower your risk of developing a serious or chronic illness and thus extend your possible healthspan past the average. 

Here are four steps you can start taking today to improve your healthspan: 

1. Eat a balanced, nutritious diet

There is no single diet or way of eating that is going to improve your healthspan, per the experts at Harvard. But we do know that filling your plate with certain foods and reducing your intake of others can definitely help. Doctors recommend favoring whole, minimally processed plant-based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes, while avoiding heavily processed, packaged and sugary foods. 

2. Move more

There’s no denying it: Exercise helps you live longer and healthier. A huge study published in the journal Circulation found that people who engaged in two to four times the recommended amount of weekly physical activity, including a combination of moderate-intensity leisure activity and higher intensity exercise, had up to a 31% lower risk of mortality from any cause. 

3. Don’t smoke

There is serious proof that smoking impacts life expectancy and healthspan. A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that smoking throughout your life can reduce your life expectancy by up to 10 years, but quitting at any age can give you some of that time back. 

For example, even quitting smoking at 65 years old could add 3.4 years to your life, while continuing to smoke past 65 can lead to a loss of 5.9 years in life expectancy. And that’s all before considering the serious illnesses that smoking can cause that would reduce your healthspan (and potentially, lifespan), such as lung cancer, colorectal cancer, gum disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.

4. Be social

Socializing with friends and family and participating in activities you enjoy will help increase your healthspan. Per the National Institute on Aging, loneliness and social isolation can negatively impact both your physical and mental health, while staying active and social can lower your risk of developing illnesses like heart disease, dementia, and some types of cancer.

Live better!

To recap: Your lifespan is how long you live and your healthspan is how well you live, or how long you live without any serious illnesses. Studies show that there are simple steps you can take to lengthen your healthspan, with one of them being adopting a fitness regimen that incorporates both moderate and high-intensity exercise. 

If you’re looking for a way to get both (and more!), consider the Hydrow rowing machine. Not only can you get a challenging variety of workouts on the rowing machine, but you’ll also have access to our extensive library of off-the-rower classes to help you start living better and healthier today. 

Learn more about the benefits of rowing and a Hydrow rowing machine today!