0 Women: Want to Look Younger and Add Years to Your Life?

By Nicky Morris


Did you know, that making simple changes to your lifestyle can keep you healthier and younger.

We all know that being overweight, drinking too much, smoking and lack of exercise is going to have a bad affect on our health. And what affect do these factors have on our life expectancy?

It's a question that a research team from the National Institutes of Health and Human Services, and the National Cancer Institute have been looking to address by studying some of the factors that could have a bearing on the life expectancy of a woman, in either increasing or decreasing it.

The research team stated: "Our goal was to assess the relative strength and joint contributions of factors on the risk of death in postmenopausal women". The main areas of interest to the researchers were those things affecting life expectancy that could be easily changed for example through exercise or diet.

What's required for a long life?

The study was large, consisting of almost 18,000 women, who had an average of 68.

Looking at those factors that were considered high risk, and yet could be easily changed, the researchers highlighted: being overweight, with fat around the abdominal region, smoking, having high blood pressure and being unfit.

How do you go about reducing this risk factors?

The study showed that fortunately, a few simple changes to your lifestyle can have a major impact on your overall health and life expectancy.

Including:

Start to exercise. Any type of exercise is good for health, even a simple 30 min daily walk has been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, reduce arthritic pain, reduce the progression of dementia and diabetes, reduce depression, and make you lose weight, which leads to the second point and third points.

Keeping a healthy weight. It was noted that it's important to lose that 'tummy fat', studies indicate that having fat round the waist increase the chances of heart disease.

Maintaing a normal blood pressure, which can be done by exercise, balanced diet and not smoking.

Quit smoking. For smokers, giving up dramatically reduces the risks of cancers and heart disease. It's never too late.

From these four, smoking was highlighted as particularly detrimental to your health, causing 25% of the cancer deaths in women. The researchers went on to say: "The strong association of smoking with mortality is a critical reminder that smoking is the most important modifiable risk factor that physicians and society should address, even in older women." (Arch Intern Med 2006;2469-77)




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