A new study from Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has found that women can dramatically reduce their chances of dying earlier by adopting simple diet lifestyle rules.

 

The key to a healthier and longer life is to eat healthily, exercise regularly, stop smoking and manage your weight.  The study shows that the more of these habits a woman adopts the lower her risk of diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Breaking each of these rules can increase the risk of cancer three fold; the risk of heart disease eight fold and the risk of dying young from any cause four fold. The research also indicated that more than half of women who die young could have lived longer if they took better care of their health.

 

Lifestyle studies in the past were often based on men but this one, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at the diet and lifestyle of 80,000 women aged between 34 and 59, who were healthy at the start of the research. Over the next 25 years around 9,000 women died – about 4,500 from cancer and 1,790 from heart disease. The study showed that being overweight increased the risk of death by 18 percent and being obese by 67 percent. Smoking up to 14 cigarettes a day increased the risk of death by 94 percent and smoking more than this had more than a two fold increase. Having one alcohol drink a day decreased the risk but more than this saw it increase.

 

Eating five portions of fruit and vegetable a day, one serving of nuts and cereal a day – and red meat less than twice a month – cut the risk of early death by 35 per cent. Women who exercised for up to two hours a week reduced the risk of death by 16 percent but this increased to 23 per cent if they exercised up to 3.5 hours a week.

 

This research proves without a doubt that simple diet and lifestyle changes can have a massive impact on reducing the risk of dying early.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 2:40 am and is filed under General Health, Healthy Living, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.