The seven golden rules for a healthy life: Simple lifestyle steps can help prevent cancer and heart disease, say experts
- Rules include being a healthy weight, physically active and eating healthily
- Also important to keep blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar down
- Adhering to at least six 'rules' reduced the risk of cancer by 51 per cent
- Researchers say it's never too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle
By ANTHONY BOND and ANNA HODGEKISS
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Adhering to at least six of the 'Life's Simple 7' list of lifestyle choices from the American Heart Association reduced the risk of an early death, say researchers.
The seven golden rules are being physically active, keeping a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet, maintaining healthy cholesterol levels, keeping blood pressure down, regulating blood sugar levels and not smoking.
Longer life: Seven simple health lifestyle steps - including eating a healthy diet and keeping blood pressure down - can help prevent cancer as well as heart disease, according to a new study
When smoking status was not considered, people who met five or six of the remaining six factors had a 25 per cent lower cancer risk than those who met none.
The list was originally compiled by the American Heart Association to ward off heart disease. However, new research shows they can also help prevent cancer.
Lead author Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, an assistant professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said: 'We were gratified to know adherence to the Life's Simple 7 goals was also associated with reduced incidence of cancer.
'This can help health professionals provide a clear, consistent message about the most important things people can do to protect their health and lower their overall risk for chronic diseases.'
THE 7 HEALTHY STEPS
Being physically active
Keeping a healthy weight
Eating a healthy diet
Maintaining healthy cholesterol levels
Keeping blood pressure down
Regulating blood sugar levels
Not smoking
Adhering to six or seven of the factors reduced the risk of cancer by 51 per cent, compared with people who met none of the factors. Meeting four factors led to a 33 per cent risk reduction and one or two, a 21 per cent reduction.
Life's Simple 7 is part of the association's My Life Check campaign that advises Americans to adhere to seven factors for a healthy heart.
Dr Rasmussen-Torvik said: 'We're trying to help promote a comprehensive health message.
'Quitting smoking is very important, but there are other factors you need to be aware of if you want to live a healthy life.
'This adds to the strong body of literature suggesting that it's never too late to change, and that if you make changes like quitting smoking and improving your diet, you can reduce your risk for both cardiovascular disease and cancer.'
Research has shown that keeping blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure within a healthy range can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.
The risk of heart disease is five times higher in middle aged men with diabetes and eight times higher in women with diabetes.
Too much cholesterol in the blood causes the arteries to harden and narrow. This slows down and may eventually block blood flow to the heart, causing a heart attack.
Other key steps for avoiding cancer and heart disease include being physically active and quitting smoking
Participants in the new study included 13,253 white and African-American men and women in the ongoing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, launched in 1987 in four U.S. communities.
They were interviewed and examined at the start of the study to determine which health factors they met or followed.
About 20 years later, the researchers reviewed cancer registries and hospital records and determined that 2,880 of the participants ended up with cancer, primarily of the lung, colon or rectum, prostate and breast.
Non-melanoma skin cancers were not considered, and researchers didn't look at cancer risk factor changes over time.
The findings were published in the journal Circulation.
They come after a report in The Lancet warned that Britons' toxic lifestyles mean that a rising number of young people are dying prematurely from alcohol and drug abuse - and the current generation is set to suffer more years of debilitating illness in old age compared to the last.
Active: Experts are increasingly stressing the importance of exercise, with a wealth of research showing that sitting for several hours a day increases the risk of chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease
The alarming report shows that despite huge advances in cancer screening, immunisations and a smoking ban, life expectancy is not increasing as rapidly in Briton compared to other nations.
Those aged between 20 and 54 in the UK are also more likely to spend longer suffering from physical or mental illness than adults in most other developed countries, such as the U.S, Australia and Canada.
The study, published in The Lancet, found that smoking was the top reason for an early death in the UK, accounting for 12 per cent, followed by high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise, alcohol and poor diet.
But research is increasingly showing it is rarely too late to make lifestyle changes.
They come after German researchers announced last month that quitting smoking in middle age or beyond still has significant health benefits.
Watching weight: A recent study in The Lancet found that obesity and its associated diseases was one of the key reasons for an early death
Even lifelong smokers who gave up smoking later on in life still experienced a massive 40 per cent reduction in the risk of heart attack and stroke within just five years.
The study followed nearly 9,000 German people aged between 50 and 74 years for ten years.
Professor Hermann Brenner and his colleagues from the German Cancer Research Centre were able to show that smokers were at double the risk of developing heart disease compared to non-smokers, but that former smokers were at almost the same low rate as people of the same age who have never smoked.
Meanwhile, a Canadian study published earlier this year demonstrated that people who give up smoking by the age of 44 can live almost as long as those who have never smoked.
'Quitting smoking before age 40, and preferably well before 40, gives back almost all of the decade of lost life from continued smoking,' study leader Professor Prabhat Jha.
The researchers found that people who quit smoking between the ages of 35 and 44 gained about nine years and those who quit between ages 45-54 and 55-64 gained six and four years of life, respectively.
Experts are also increasingly concerned about the amount of time we spend sitting. Last month Kansas State University researchers warned that office workers could be risking their health simply by sitting at their desk.
They found that people who spend more than four hours a day sitting down are at greater risk of chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Those sitting for at least six hours were significantly more likely to have diabetes.
Research published last month from Leicester University recommended that people at high risk of developing diabetes may be able to escape the condition by cutting the time they spending sitting down by 90 minutes every day.
They found important risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, such as blood glucose and cholesterol levels, improved far more in people told to sit less, compared with those doing required amounts of exercise.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2295568/The-seven-point-plan-healthy-life-Simple-lifestyle-steps-help-prevent-cancer-heart-disease-new-study-finds.html#ixzz2NykmxMOJ
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