Have you ever wondered how significant the impact of heart-healthy behaviors could be on your heart health?
Here are 2 research studies that I find pretty convincing.
Study 1: heart-healthy behaviors and levels of genetic risk
In this research study investigators combined data from 4 other studies representing 55,685 people to determine the impact of heart-healthy behaviors on various levels of genetic heart disease risk.
They defined a “favorable lifestyle” as 4 heart-healthy behaviors: not smoking, no obesity (body-mass index <30), physical activity at least once weekly, and a healthy diet pattern.
They determined genetic risk by calculating an individual’s risk for heart disease according to how many genes they had that are known to be associated with heart disease.
What they found: For those at high genetic risk, a “favorable lifestyle” was associated with a nearly 50% lower relative risk of heart disease than for those with an unfavorable lifestyle.
That’s significant! And it proves that our genes are not our destiny.
This chart illustrates the impact of lifestyle (classified as favorable, intermediate, or unfavorable) on actual heart disease risk among individuals with low, intermediate or high genetic risk for heart disease in three different studies.
If you are interested in reading the whole paper you can find it here.
Study 2: heart-healthy behaviors and lifespan
This research study combined national datasets to estimate the impact of heart-healthy behaviors on lifespan. In this research, they separated women and men and interestingly the impact of healthy behaviors had a more positive impact on women than men. They used life expectancy at age 50 as the outcome measurement. They scored each person as high or low risk across 5 healthy behaviors, and they looked at the age at which they died.
The 5 behaviors were
- smoking (amount, history)
- a healthy weight
- regular physical activity
- a healthy diet
- moderate alcohol consumption
What they found: Women who followed all 5 of the low-risk behaviors had an 82% lower risk of death from heart disease compared with those who followed 0 of the low-risk behaviors.
In terms of lifespan for women, they created the following chart. I added the line to clearly demonstrate that as compared with those who did 0 low-risk behaviors, those who did all 5 lived an estimated average of 14 more years.
14 years! Again, this is fairly convincing evidence that heart-healthy behaviors can make a big difference when it comes to heart health.
To see how they defined high vs low risk for each of these behaviors and for the behavior-specific contributions to life expectancy and all-cause mortality, you can find the paper here.
It’s encouraging to know that we can have an impact on our heart disease risk at midlife when parameters for heart health change as our ovaries stop working.
