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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Healthy Lifestyle CAN Lower Your Lifetime Risk of Heart Failure

A recent article from JAMA has shown that there is a significant association between a healthy lifestyle and your lifetime reisk of heart failure

Researches followed 20,900 men enrolled in the Physicain's Health Study who were healthy at baseline. They then compared those who adhered to a healthy lifestyle to those who did not.

The six modifiable risk factors they included in the "healthy lifestyle" were:
  1. Body weight
  2. Smoking
  3. Exercise
  4. Alcohol intake
  5. Consumption of breakfast cereals
  6. Consumption of fruits and veggies

The overall lifetime risk for heart failure among the study participants was 13.8%.

The highest risk of heart failure was in those participants who did not adhere to any of the six above lifestyle factors - 21.2%

The lowest risk of heart failure was in those participants who adhered to 4/6 of the above lifesyle factors - 10.1%

Conclusion -- adhering to a healthy lifesyle (including the 6 above mentioned factors) can dramatically lower your lifetime risk of developing heart failure

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