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Four lifestyle changes linked to better heart health
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Lifestyle factors, including regular exercise, healthy diet, maintaining a normal weight and especially not smoking, appear to protect against CHD and the early build-up of coronary calcium, according to data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to find a protective association between low-risk lifestyle factors and early signs of vascular disease, coronary heart disease and death in a single longitudinal evaluation,” researcher Haitham Ahmed, MD, MPH, internal medicine resident with the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a press release.
Ahmed and colleagues collected data on and followed 6,229 participants aged 44 to 84 years enrolled in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) from 2000 to 2010 for an average of 7.6 years. Participants were scored on a scale of 0 (least healthy) to 4 (healthiest) based on diet, BMI, amount of regular moderate-intensity physical activity and smoking status.
Roger S. Blumenthal
The researchers measured coronary calcium at baseline and at a mean of 3.1 years later to evaluate calcium progression. For participants with a score of 1, 2, 3 or 4, calcium progressions were 3.5 (95% CI, 0-7), 4.2 (95% CI, 0.6-7.9), 6.8 (95% CI, 2-11.5) and 11.1 (95% CI, 2.2-20.1) points per year slower when compared with the reference group. Results also associated lifestyle scores of 1, 2, 3 and 4 with unadjusted HRs for death of 0.79 (95% CI, 0.61-1.03), 0.61 (95% CI, 0.46-0.81), 0.49 (95% CI, 0.32-0.75) and 0.19 (95% CI, 0.05-0.75), according to the abstract.
“Of all the lifestyle factors, we found that smoking avoidance played the largest role in reducing the risk of coronary heart disease and mortality,” Roger S. Blumenthal, MD, study researcher and Cardiology Today Editorial Board member, said in the press release. “In fact, smokers who adopted two or more of the healthy behaviors still had lower survival rates after 7.6 years than did nonsmokers who were sedentary and obese.”
Ultimately, these findings suggest that lifestyle modification is key to reigning in risk for heart disease, according to the researchers.
“While there are risk factors that people can’t control, such as their family history and age, these lifestyle measures are things that people can change and consequently make a big difference in their health. That’s why we think this is so important,” Ahmed said.
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