A new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, provides new evidence that maintaining a healthy lifestyle significantly reduces the risk of human life, high blood pressure and heart failure.
First, researchers collected dietary and lifestyle data from 20,900 male physicians over an average of 22.4 years between 1982 and 2008. They then calculated each man's risk of heart failure at age 40.
The average risk of heart failure was about seven, but this risk was significantly lower than men who exercised regularly had high intakes of breakfast cereals and / or fruits and vegetables, moderate alcohol consumed, not smoke, and / or maintain a healthy body weight. And men who do not meet any of these criteria, the lifetime risk of heart failure, 21.2 percent of people who had met with four or less than half the risk, or 10.1 percent.
Armenia in the second analysis, the researchers followed 83,882 female nurses between the years 1991 and 2005, comparing them to the risk of high blood pressure in different dietary and lifestyle factors. Factors studied included normal body weight, healthy diet, moderate alcohol consumption, use of folic acid supplements, for an average of 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day, use of painkillers and less than once a week.
The researchers found that women who meet one of six criteria for a 54 percent lower risk of high blood pressure than women who have not met one women who met the four standards that have 58 percent lower risk, women who met for five had 72 percent lower risk and women who met all six were 78 percent lower risk. Obesity alone increased a woman's risk of high blood pressure is 370 percent.
All factors included in the study had previously been connected to or high blood pressure or heart failure risk.