Wilson Pon
archilles
JessiccaNot too late…
October 18th 2007 10:00
Article extracted and compiled from Health section, The Star Malaysia, by Reuters
Late-starters can still benefit from healthy habits
“Just because you are aged doesn’t mean you are old,” my dad would always encourage me whenever I tried hard to catch up with my stamina doing some things and start grumbling out loud of my “old age”.
This can be proven true. When your age increases it doesn’t mean that you will have an unhealthy body, and the good news is, even middle-aged individual who hasn’t been healthy could still catch up with their health, even lowering health problems such as heart complications.
By adopting a healthy lifestyle, one can lower the risk of heart disease and premature death within years of changing habits, the recent research mentioned.
Middle-aged adults who began eating 5 or more fruits and vegetables everyday, exercising for at least 2 1.2 hours a week, keeping weight down and not smoking decreased their risk of heart disease by 35% and risk of death by 40% in the four years after they started.
“The adopters of a healthy lifestyle basically caught up. Within 4 years, their mortality rate and rate of heart attacks matched the people who had been doing these behaviours all along,” said Dr. Dana King at the Medical University of South Carolina, the United States, who led the research.
That is not to say people should wait until their 40s or 50s to get on track, he added.
“But even if you have not had a healthy lifestyle previously, it’s not too late to adopt those healthy lifestyle habits and gain almost immediate benefits.”
Dr. King and his team set out to find the late-starters could reap the rewards of habits like eating vegetables and walking 30 minutes a day.
When they began tracking nearly 60,000 Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 in the late 80s, only 8.5% were following all four of the habits they were studying, they reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
Of the other adults, 8.4% started practising all four habits within 6 years after the study began. Those 970 lifestyle converts were most likely to pick up the fruit-vegetable habit at the late stage. Losing weight to fall within the healthy to overweight range – which the researchers counted as one of the healthy habits – was the least popular change. But when they finally had picked up all four habits, they enjoyed a sharp decline of heart disease risk and in death from any cause.
Still, said Dr Nichola Davis at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine: “These benefits are on a continuum. The more of the healthy habits that you can adapt, the better. These are modest changes that they’re talking about.”
Dr. King’s team took age, gender, race and other risk categories for cardiovascular disease into account, although he said the converts likely took up other healthy life changes – such as cutting down salt or upping their calcium intake – that might have contributed to their health benefits.
In particular, men, blacks, people will less education and lower incomes, and people with high blood pressure or diabetes were less likely to follow the health guidelines from the beginning or adopt them later in life.
Personal Note:
My mother who had suffered Steven Johnson Syndrome last year still managed to recuperate pretty fast even with a drastic change of majority fruits and vegetables diet due to allergic to animal protein and fat. It seemed that the intake of such amount of fruits and vegetables (with high amounts of antioxidant in them) have helped her cells to recuperate in a faster rate, even though her kidney and liver was horribly weaken due to the attack. Now although she can’t take much fish she has manage to eat chicken and some ham and this is a great leap for someone of older age who suffered chronic skin disease.
Late-starters can still benefit from healthy habits
“Just because you are aged doesn’t mean you are old,” my dad would always encourage me whenever I tried hard to catch up with my stamina doing some things and start grumbling out loud of my “old age”.
This can be proven true. When your age increases it doesn’t mean that you will have an unhealthy body, and the good news is, even middle-aged individual who hasn’t been healthy could still catch up with their health, even lowering health problems such as heart complications.
By adopting a healthy lifestyle, one can lower the risk of heart disease and premature death within years of changing habits, the recent research mentioned.
Middle-aged adults who began eating 5 or more fruits and vegetables everyday, exercising for at least 2 1.2 hours a week, keeping weight down and not smoking decreased their risk of heart disease by 35% and risk of death by 40% in the four years after they started.
“The adopters of a healthy lifestyle basically caught up. Within 4 years, their mortality rate and rate of heart attacks matched the people who had been doing these behaviours all along,” said Dr. Dana King at the Medical University of South Carolina, the United States, who led the research.
That is not to say people should wait until their 40s or 50s to get on track, he added.
“But even if you have not had a healthy lifestyle previously, it’s not too late to adopt those healthy lifestyle habits and gain almost immediate benefits.”
Dr. King and his team set out to find the late-starters could reap the rewards of habits like eating vegetables and walking 30 minutes a day.
When they began tracking nearly 60,000 Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 in the late 80s, only 8.5% were following all four of the habits they were studying, they reported in the American Journal of Medicine.
Of the other adults, 8.4% started practising all four habits within 6 years after the study began. Those 970 lifestyle converts were most likely to pick up the fruit-vegetable habit at the late stage. Losing weight to fall within the healthy to overweight range – which the researchers counted as one of the healthy habits – was the least popular change. But when they finally had picked up all four habits, they enjoyed a sharp decline of heart disease risk and in death from any cause.
Still, said Dr Nichola Davis at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine: “These benefits are on a continuum. The more of the healthy habits that you can adapt, the better. These are modest changes that they’re talking about.”
Dr. King’s team took age, gender, race and other risk categories for cardiovascular disease into account, although he said the converts likely took up other healthy life changes – such as cutting down salt or upping their calcium intake – that might have contributed to their health benefits.
In particular, men, blacks, people will less education and lower incomes, and people with high blood pressure or diabetes were less likely to follow the health guidelines from the beginning or adopt them later in life.
Personal Note:
My mother who had suffered Steven Johnson Syndrome last year still managed to recuperate pretty fast even with a drastic change of majority fruits and vegetables diet due to allergic to animal protein and fat. It seemed that the intake of such amount of fruits and vegetables (with high amounts of antioxidant in them) have helped her cells to recuperate in a faster rate, even though her kidney and liver was horribly weaken due to the attack. Now although she can’t take much fish she has manage to eat chicken and some ham and this is a great leap for someone of older age who suffered chronic skin disease.
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Comment by Krystal
feelings
Comment by Jessicca
Learning Something Everyday
Malaysia Found
Yes, when I read the headings of it, it too drew my attention to know more and with my mother's testimony of recuperating from her horrible allergy disease with the help of fruits and vegetables, one just can't help knowing that nature does have its way to its restoration, just that we need to know the way. ^_^
Glad you liked the article. Do keep it up and hope you will share this information to more people.
Have a blessed day
Jessicca
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
The most surprising thing is that it really isn't all that hard to do. That exercise there is only 30 minutes a day... that's nothing.
For me, giving up smoking was perhaps the hardest thing to do, but not impossible and the benfits really outwiegh any initial hardship. The quality of life gained is awesome! My advice to thsoe over 40, don't wait for the doctor to tell you, that if you don't stop smoking, NOW, you'll be dead in a week... so few can come back from that precipice.
Great Post Jessica, I've said it before, your Dad is a wise man
Lilla ...