Further Support for a Healthy Lifestyle

A healthy lifestyle has been proved to lower the risk of coronary heart disease that may lead to heart attack. But so far there’s been no firm evidence that it can help prevent stroke, too. That has now changed. The 37,000-plus women in the Women’s Health Study submit regular reports on their health and lifestyle. They were then classified according to their lifestyle reports.

Over a 10-year period, there were 450 strokes reported. The risk of stroke was about two to three times lower in the women leading the healthiest lifestyle. This was based on a score built out of the following factors: never smoking, 4 to 10 alcoholic drinks a week, exercise 4 or more times a week, BMI below 22, high cereal fiber diet, high omega-3 diet, high ratio of poly-unsaturated to saturated fatty acids, and low or no trans fats.

Just because these results were obtained in a collective of women doesn’t mean that they don’t apply to men as well. We advise men not to wait for the study to be repeated in their sex, but to move across to the healthy way of life, right now.