Researchers at the University of Zurich have for the first time broken down the effects of leading a healthy lifestyle into numbers. The comprehensive 30-year study looked at the World Health Organisation's four behavioural risk factors for conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disorders.
Researchers compared the tobacco, fruit and alcohol consumption, as well as physical activity levels, of 16,721 people aged 16 to 90 from 1977 to 1993, and studied the impact of their lifestyle on participant death rates up to 2008. Unsurprisingly, cigarettes have a detrimental effect on mortality rates, with smokers having a 57 per cent higher risk of dying prematurely. An unhealthy diet, not enough physical activity, and alcohol abuse can each result in an elevated mortality risk of around 15 per cent.
When all four risk factors are combined, the prospect of an early death increases dramatically. For example, the probability of a 75-year-old man with all risk factors surviving the next 10 years is 35 per cent; without the risk factors, there is a 67 per cent chance he will live for another 10 years. For women, these percentages are 47 and 74 per cent respectively.
Poor lifestyle choices, however, had little effect on death rates until people made it to the 65 to 75 age bracket, when the death rates of smokers, the physically unfit, and people with poor diets started to rise dramatically, said Dr Brian Martin, who led the research group.
( http://www.bbc.com)
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