LIFESTYLE RIGHT, LOWER CARDIOVASCULAR RISK
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Maintaining a healthy lifestyle during the course of life is closely related to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in middle age, according to a new study by the Department of Medicine at Northwestern.
"The problem is that few adults are able to keep for years a healthy lifestyle," said Liu Kiang, lead author of the study and a professor in the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Many middle-aged adults have a poor diet, overweight and are physically active. This promotes high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and high cardiovascular risk"
"In this study, people with a family history of heart disease were able to have a low risk of cardiovascular disease, if they have begun to adopt a healthy lifestyle when they were young," said Liu. "This supports the idea that lifestyle may play a more important role of genetics."
The majority of people who have kept the five key factors of a healthy lifestyle, which is an adequate index of lean body mass (BMI), no excess alcohol intake, not smoking, a healthy diet and regular physical activity, were in this low risk in their middle age.
In the first year of the study, when the average age of participants was 24 years, almost 44 percent had a low risk of cardiovascular disease. Twenty years later, on the whole, only 24.5 percent of the category of low-risk profile for cardiovascular disease.
The researchers used data collected over 20 years: In fact, the study began in 1985 to 1986 with several thousand participants aged between 18 and 30 years and for over 20 years has followed the same group of participants.
The researchers analyzed data such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, body mass index, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, diet and exercise.
"If the next generation of young people will be able to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles, gain in health" said Liu. "Many studies suggest that people who have a low cardiovascular risk in middle age will have a better quality of life, live longer and have lower costs in old age," he said. "Many then are the benefits of maintaining a low risk profile.
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This research was published in February in the journal "Circulation": This is the first study to show the association of a healthy lifestyle maintained throughout adulthood with a low risk of cardiovascular disease in middle age.
Source: WorldHealth
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