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13.06.2012

Combined effect of not smoking, healthy eating and exercise is tremendous

This web magazine is famous for its posts on things like HMB, hydroxypropyl-distarch phosphate of waxy maize starch, Silybum marianum and DHA, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that you can only attain health if you've got an advanced degree in some esoteric subject. But of course that's not the case. According to a study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, USA, just sticking to three simple lifestyle rules can have a dramatic positive effect on your health.

Study
In 2012 the researchers published in Preventive Medicine the results of a study in which they followed 8375 Americans over the age of twenty for nearly six years. The researchers knew whether the participants smoked, what they ate and whether they exercised.

So they were looking at three characteristics. The participants who didn't smoke scored well for the 'low risk' category. The researchers measured the quality of the participants' diet according to criteria such as variety, salt, vegetable and fruit intake. Participants in the healthiest 40 percent scored as low risk. And thirdly the researchers measured how minutes of moderately intensive or intensive exercise the participants did each week. Those who exercised for over 150 minutes a week also scored for low risk.

Results
In the table below you can see that not smoking was the lifestyle factor that weighed most heavily. The mortality risk of non-smokers was 56 percent lower than that of smokers. In second place came exercise, and third diet.

The table above shows the combined effect of not smoking, healthy eating and exercise. If you don't smoke, eat reasonably healthily and get a little bit of exercise your mortality risk is 82 percent lower than that of someone who does smoke, eats unhealthily and does no exercise. That's almost a factor of 6.

Conclusion
If you're a regular reader of this web magazine, then your diet is probably considerably better than most of the 'healthy eaters' in the American study. On top of that, you probably get much more exercise than the average 'enough exercise' person in this study. With a bit of luck you'll live to be a hundred.

Source:
Prev Med. 2012 Jul;55(1):23-7.

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