Lifestyle Has Large Impact on Women’s Health..

September 18, 2008 - Women who adopt a healthy lifestyle could halve the risk of premature death from chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease according to a study on the website of the British Medical Journal.

Paper: Combined impact of lifestyle factors on mortality: prospective cohort study in US women, Rob M van Dam et al., BMJ 2008;337:a1440, published 16 September 2008.

Poor diet, lack of physical activity, obesity, alcohol consumption and smoking increase the risk of diseases including cancer and diabetes but little research has examined combinations of lifestyle factors in younger populations and women. Dr Rob van Dam and his team from the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital, recruited nearly 80,000 women aged 34 to 59 years in 1980 who were part of the Nurses' Health Study in the US. They analyzed the data of over 1.5 million person-years follow up over a 24 year period.

Participants completed detailed follow-up questionnaires every two years about their diet, frequency of physical activity, alcohol intake, weight, how much they smoked, and disease history. Deaths were confirmed by next of kin and the National Death Index. Over the follow-up period the authors documented 8 882 deaths including 1,790 from heart disease and 4,527 from cancer.

The authors estimated that 28% of these deaths could have been avoided if women had never smoked and that 55% could have been avoided if women had combined never smoking, regular physical activity, a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight. Alcohol intake did not substantially change this estimate, although heavy alcohol consumption is linked to an increased risk of dying from cancer.

Smoking was found to be the biggest cause of premature death but all the other factors also contributed.

Interestingly, women with light-to-moderate alcohol consumption (up to 1 drink a day) were less likely to die from cardiovascular diseases than alcohol abstainers. The authors believe the results of this research indicate that more needs to be done to eradicate smoking and to encourage individuals to take regular exercise and eat healthily.They conclude that "even modest differences in lifestyle can have a substantial impact on reducing mortality rates."

Reference:
Women: Half Of Early Deaths From Chronic Diseases Could Have Been Eliminated Through Lifestyle Changes, scientificblogging.com, 9/16/2008.