Live healthy, lower heart disease risk

U.S. doctors say keeping to a healthy lifestyle helps men lower their lifetime risk of heart failure.

Their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found desirable behaviors — exercising regularly, drinking moderately, not smoking, not being overweight and eating a diet that includes vegetables, fruits and cereal — were each associated with a lower lifetime risk of heart failure compared to a corresponding undesirable behavior.

There was an inverse and graded association between the number of healthy lifestyle factors and lifetime risk of heart failure, the study said.

The study included data from 20,900 men who had been healthy and an average age of 53.6 years when first enrolled in the Physicians’ Health Study. They were tracked an average of 22.4 years.

A demonstration of beneficial influence of healthy lifestyle habits on the lifetime risk has potential clinical and public health implications, study researcher Dr. Luc Djousse of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Boston Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in Boston, said in a statement.