The Combination of Healthy Behaviors Reduces Risk Of Death and Disease

By Frits Ahlefeldt [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

Are you health conscious? No doubt that you are! As you have chosen to read this article, instead of investing your time in so many other walks of life. So, the good thing is that the goals for a healthy life are clear for most of us.

Piecemeal Strategies Work; But Incompletely

Do you belong to any of the following groups of health-conscious people? People who are busy trying the newest super-food or other wonder diets, or others that are hitting harder in the gyms or the learning most difficult yoga-asanas, or among those who are seriously giving up consuming tobacco and large amounts of alcohol, or among those who are looking for ways to improve their sleep hygiene and quality.

But is the path that we are on best and the effort that we are putting enough? Do we have a plan of action for all behavior areas or in just one or a few of the above areas? Would you agree with me that most of us want for a single bull's-eye intervention to lead a healthy life? Do all of us choose the combination of healthy behaviors as a strategy to beat chronic diseases and death.

Holistic Approach To Health Gives The Best Long Term Results

While it starts with taking baby steps one by one, but one should not restrict only to the one or two chosen healthy behaviors, because science has proven it that people with the highest number of positive factors live longest and have the least burden of diseases later on in life.

Would you buy this statement about the benefit or you are looking for more specific information? Being specific, the deaths that occurred in the highest healthy lifestyle score category were only one-third to one fourth than the deaths that occurred within the group having the lowest lifestyle scores.

I am pleased to share more details about the studies. Two large studies, one from Japan and another from Australia have proven that the combination strategy works best.

Highlighted Virtues and Vices

The above two studies have considered similar factors but the Japanese study emphasized positive behaviors(Virtues) more than Australian study which emphasized more on negative ones (Vices)

Summarizing above studies the combination of lifestyle behaviors that need to be encouraged are:

Daily consumption of fruits, fish, milk,
Moderate exercise,
Body mass index (BMI) of 21–25,
Sleep duration of 7–9 hours per night.

On the other hand, the behaviors that need to be reduced are:

Smoking,
High alcohol intake,
Poor diet,
Physical inactivity, prolonged sitting,
Unhealthy (short/long) sleep duration.

I would like to conclude by quoting the above studies

"Adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors could reduce the risk of death from all causes."

"A large fraction of Cardiovascular disease could be prevented through lifestyle modification."

About the author: Dr. Naval Asija is a licensed MBBS Physician from India. MBBS is the equivalent of the MD degree offered by international medical schools. He is based in Delhi, India, and works as a medical writer, editor, and consultant. He supports medical researches as an author's editor, medical communication companies involved in medico-marketing activities, and medical technology companies in improving their products. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navalasija/

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