Quick, unexpected, without warning.

In most dictionaries, you find “sudden” defined that way.

Yet you don’t think twice about using that word to describe a heart attack, do you? In most cases, though, you should.

In Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (Harmony, 2023), Dr. Peter Attia explains that when someone dies “suddenly” of a heart attack, “the disease had likely been progressing in their coronary arteries for two decades.” He mentions this to impress upon readers the need to be proactive rather than reactive about health.

It comes a bit after he refers to heart disease along with neurodegenerative disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer as “the Four Horseman.”

That allusion - whether it’s to the four figures in the book of Revelation or the four Notre Dame football players atop horses in that famous photograph from the 1920s - is made for good reason. Too often your attempt to battle against and negate any or all of these four afflictions begins too late, “well after the disease has taken hold.”

Acting too late leads to a personal apocalypse far worse than any gridiron beatdown the Fighting Irish ever inflicted upon Army or Navy. Not only in all likelihood is your lifespan reduced, but also the quality of life in your last years is lessened - often to the point where you’re not really living but merely existing.

That’s the sort of fate I wouldn’t wish upon any rival, be it for a pigskin, a promotion, or a pretty girl. As well as one of the reasons why these articles so often explain the science behind the health and fitness studies making news.

According to Attia, the scoop if you aspire to live longer than an actuarial chart determines you should, and without a wheelchair and an oxygen mask, is to practice what he calls the art of longevity. You can learn how to a large degree by reading his book that’s still made last week’s New York Times Bestseller list - nine weeks after its debut.

But a paper presented on July 21 in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, Nutrition 2023, challenges Attia’s use of “art.”

It suggests that there’s no real craft, no real skill to longevity.

That common sense is what’s most required.

The paper uses the medical records and questionnaires accrued between 2011 and 2019 on over 700,000 veterans at least 40 years old who participated in the Veterans Affairs Million Veterans Program, a program that aids vets and allows researchers to study how genes, lifestyles, and military experiences and exposures affect their physical and mental health.

Over that eight-year span, 30,000 participants passed away. Researchers used that, other existing info, and two established longevity formulas to make a prediction that just about every health and fitness website has since commented upon.

That men who turn eight good-for-you behaviors into full-blown habits by the age of 40 will live on an average up to 24 years longer than those who reach that age without adopting any of them. That women on average will gain up to 23 years by doing the same.

If these gains sound too good to be true, be aware that I felt that way too, initially.

A less-than-clear recollection caused my skepticism. A hazy memory of a study done a few years ago that predicted a lifespan gain of less than half of that by adopting healthy habits.

That memory became clearer when Medical News Today’s article about the 24-years-gained prediction referenced that study, explaining it was conducted at Harvard, published in 2018, and only considered five of the eight habits. And with that, so did my whole take on the matter.

So what if subsequent studies could find the new prediction - or even the old one - to be inflated? What difference does it really make if turning these eight good-for-you behaviors into habits leads to less longevity than the researchers envision?

The fact of the matter is these changes improve your quality of life almost immediately after you make them - and making them isn’t particularly difficult. And doing so is certainly common sense.

So is finally divulging the list after tantalizing you with it for so long: Don’t smoke or get addicted to opioids; consume alcohol no more than occasionally; manage stress; develop and maintain positive relationships; sleep sufficiently; eat healthfully; exercise regularly.

Factor into the equation that we currently believe about 70 percent of cardiovascular death, 80 percent of heart disease, and 90 percent of type 2 diabetes can be attributed to habits directly opposed to these eight and adopting them turns common sense into a bonafide no-brainer.

Even if you’re older than 40.

Xuan-Mai T. Nguyen, a health science specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs who presented the study to the American Society for Nutrition, stressed to Medical News Today that even though earlier is better, turning these behaviors into habits at any age is beneficial.