Heart failure is increasingly common and is associated with a death rate of between 20 and 50% after onset. Repeated hospitalization and impaired quality of life, because of symptoms, are linked to heart failure, making it an urgent public health issue.
Yet we know little of the lifestyle factors that may impact heart failure risk. A new report from the long-running Physicians’ Health Study now shows how adopting healthy habits could really reduce your chances of developing heart failure.
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, studied nearly 21,000 men of average age around 54 years who were healthy at the start of the study. Six modifiable lifestyle factors were assessed: body weight, smoking, exercise, alcohol intake, consumption of breakfast cereal and consumption of fruits and vegetables. There were 1,200 new cases of heart failure and 4,999 confirmed deaths in the follow up time of 22 years. Overall, the lifetime risk of heart failure was 13.8% at age 40 and remained constant to age 70.
Having a normal body weight, never smoking, regular exercise, moderate alcohol intake and consumption of breakfast cereal, fruit and vegetables were linked to lower lifetime risk of heart failure compared to corresponding unhealthy behaviors. Men adhering to none of the six desirable lifestyle factors had a one in five lifetime risk of heart failure, while those adhering to four or more of the factors had a one in ten lifetime risk of heart failure. In other words, healthy living could reduce your risk of heart failure from 20% to 10% - a worthwhile goal.
