What makes these studies important is the sheer size of them

There’s no getting away from the facts and clinical evidence which have shown time and time again that eating healthy pays huge health dividends in the long term. Two brand new clinical studies from an extremely respected medical establishment that have just been released have confirmed the dangers of eating unhealthily and the huge benefits of eating properly for both men and women.

The studies which were both done at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston  looked at a whole array of different risk factors which were being overweight, not exercising, smoking, drinking alcohol and not eating fruit and veg. The first study looked at almost 84,000 women as part of the Nurses' Health Study and the second study examined medical data from 21,000 men in the Physicians' Health Study. What makes these studies important is the sheer size of them and the fact that they looked at so many different aspects of lifestyle which are believed to impact on good health and longevity.

They particularly focused on the relationship between healthy lifestyle and the chances of suffering from heart failure which is a major cause of death in the western world. They saw that the chances of men suffering from heart failure was about twenty percent for those who ignored all five lifestyle recommendations and around ten percent for those ignored four out of five.  They said that the biggest risk factor for heart failure for men was being overweight or obese with a seventeen percent chance of dying from heart failure. Obesity was also the number one risk factor for women too. Those people who did not exercise were also seen to have a significant risk of dying from heart disease.

Dr. Veronique L. Roger from the Mayo Clinic commented on the studies and said that it was important to note that individual lifestyles were often decided by society as a whole and that it would be very difficult for certain people for example to follow a healthy Mediterranean diet when they lived in an area and in a culture which did not to promote or recommend that way of living.

Dr Roger said that government initiatives could play a massive part in helping people to get healthy and at Ukmedix News we believe that if they put their minds to it properly governments could have far more effect on reducing individual obesity than the individuals themselves.

The clinical studies were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.