What aspects of a healthy lifestyle are important for reducing disease risk? If you had to choose which things you changed to improve your life and which ones you didn’t change, which would you choose?

A study in Germany looked at four lifestyle factors and 4 diseases in 23,513 Germans, aged 35 to 65.

The four factors were never smoking, having a body mass index lower than 30; doing 3.5 hours, or more, per week exercise; and adhering to healthy dietary principles (high intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain bread and low meat consumption). The 4 factors (ranked healthy, 1 point; unhealthy, 0 points) were summed to form an index that ranged from 0 to 4.

The diseases were heart attack, stroke and new diagnoses of diabetes, and cancer

Less than 4% of participants had zero healthy factors, most had 1 to 3 healthy factors, and approximately 9% had 4 factors.

During an average follow-up of 7.8 years, the percentages of participants that developed diabetes was 3.7%, myocardial infarction was 0.9%, stroke was 0.8%, and cancer was 3.8%.

Participants with all 4 factors had a 78% reduced risk of developing a chronic disease overall. The reduced risk for diabetes was 93%; heart attack was 81%; stroke was 50%; and cancer was 36%, compared to participants without a healthy factor.

The hazard ratio for developing a chronic disease decreased progres, the less likely you are to get a chronic disease of aging.

So which factors had the most impact on having a lower risk for common chronic diseases?

The largest reduction in risk was associated with having a BMI lower than 30, followed by never smoking, followed by at least 3.5 hours of exercise and last adhering to good dietary principles.

So, unfortunately this study suggests that the thing that you could do to have the greatest impact on long term health is to keep below a BMI of 30 (a BMI of 30 and greater is considered obese). For most of us this is probably the hardest of the four factors to control.

photo credit: dichohecho

[tags]disease risk, healthy lifestyle, BMI, smoking, healthy diet, exercise[/tags]