How to avoid heart disease and cancer at the same time ~ Health Matters Today!
Consider it the ultimate health twofer. A new Northwestern Medicine study shows the behaviors and risk factors that reduce the incidence of heart disease also substantially lower the risk of lung, breast, prostate and colon cancers by up to nearly 40 percent.
This is the first study to examine the effect of seven key healthy cardiovascular behaviors and risk factors on cancer incidence. Those seven measures include a healthy diet, plenty of physical activity, no smoking, healthy body weight and blood pressure and ideal levels of cholesterol and blood sugar. Having just one of them lowered the risk of cancer by 20 percent; and having five to seven of them cut the risk by almost 40 percent.
It’s known that some of these individual factors protect against cancer, but no one had ever looked at the cumulative effect of all seven, known as the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Life’s Simple 7.
The research was presented Nov. 16 at the AHA Scientific Sessions 2011 in Orlando.
For the study, researchers looked at data from 13,360 participants from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a community-based cohort.