A study of of 20,000 adults in the UK has demonstrated that having an unhealthy lifestyle doubles your risk of suffering a stroke.
The BBC news reported on the findings of the study, which was carried out at the University of East Anglia:
Smoking, drinking too much alcohol, not taking enough exercise and eating few vegetables and little fruit contribute to the chances of a stroke.
You might think that we knew this already – but previous studies have not so clearly highlighted the risk of these factors in otherwise healthy people.
The study, led by Dr Phyo K Myint and published in the British Medical Journal, looked at 20,000 people aged 40-79, and assessed them on four key lifestyle factors, giving them a points rating from one to four in total:
One point for not smokingOne point for eating five fruit & veg portions per dayOne point for drinking between one and fourteen units of alcohol per weekOne point for being physically active
The researchers found that people with four points were much less likely to have a stroke than the people with zero points. As the BBC news explains:
Some 259 people did not score any points, of whom 15 had a stroke – at a rate of 5.8%.
But the most common score was three – achieved by 7,822 individuals, of whom 186, or 2.4%, had a stroke.
Around 5,000 achieved the healthiest score of four, which was associated with an absolute stroke risk of 1.7%.
Given that only one quarter of the study sample achieved all four health points, there’s clearly a long way to go in encouraging people to adopt healthier lifestyles. And recent news from the US also suggests a corrolation between lifestyle factors and stroke risk: people living in areas with a lot of fast food restaurants are more likely to suffer a stroke.
How do you score on the four lifestyle factors above? If you need to make changes, what could you do to hit all four points?
More like this in Science Feb 24, 2009
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