Young at Heart: Dont put off Better Health

The Impact of Health and Lifestyle Choices

Research from Northwestern University, Chicago, USA,  has highlighted the significance of health and lifestyle choices made in early adulthood can have a major impact on occurrence of future health issues, especially heart complaints.

Good or bad choices made in your 20's and carried on until your 40's could determine good or bad health in later life, with the study highlighting those who maintained good health through healthy eating, regular exercise, non smoking and moderate alcohol intake for this 20 year period were then strongly associated with a lower risk of heart disease and cardiovascular problems in middle age.

Better Lifestyle earlier in life could help in middle age

The study funded by The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institutes of Health funded this research and led by lead researcher Kiang Liu importantly emphasized that:

"In this study, even people with a family history of heart problems were able to have a low cardiovascular disease risk profile if they started living a healthy lifestyle when they were young,"

 "This supports the notion that lifestyle may play a more prominent role than genetics."

So even despite the influence of genetics and family history of illness and disease, a persons own lifestyle and health choices made at an early time in their life were the most significant pointers to good or bad health, with the study considering health influences that were most important in benefiting health including lean body mass index (BMI), no excess alcohol intake, no smoking, a healthy diet and regular physical activity were able to keep themselves in the low risk category for heart health problems.

"Sixty percent of those who maintained all five healthy lifestyles reached middle age with the low cardiovascular risk profile, compared with fewer than 5 percent who followed none of the healthy lifestyles."

Kian Lui highlighted the significance of the study as a marker of the benefits of maintaining good health through life to help keep health problems at bay:

"Many studies suggest that people who have low cardiovascular risk in middle age will have a better quality of life, will live longer and will have lower Medicare costs in their older age,"

 I have in recent articles emphasized the benefits of balanced blood sugar, energy balance to help maintain good health and the benefits of 15 minutes of exercise each day and it seems the younger you get started and maintain simple health, nutrition and lifestyle choices then the chance for a happier, healthier later life becomes a nice reality.

Journal Reference:

1. K. Liu, M. L. Daviglus, C. M. Loria, L. A. Colangelo, B. Spring, A. C. Moller, D. M. Lloyd-Jones. Healthy Lifestyle Through Young Adulthood and the Presence of Low Cardiovascular Disease Risk Profile in Middle Age: The Coronary Artery Risk Development in (Young) Adults (CARDIA) Study. Circulation, 2012; 125 (8): 996 DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.111.060681

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