What Is A Healthy Lifestyle?

by Dr. Edward Nalband, Medical Director

How healthy is your lifestyle? In order to answer that question, you need to know what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. Most people who have chronic diseases and suffer the increased morbidity and mortality, not to mention the decreased quality of life that result from them, share certain common lifestyle traits. They smoke cigarettes, eat a poor diet, are overweight and are physically inactive. Does this describe you? A recent article in the Archives of Internal Medicine (April 25, 2005, 165:8, 854-857) tried to determine just how many Americans follow a lifestyle that has all four characteristics of a healthy lifestyle.

They looked at self-reported responses to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and examined data from 153,805 respondents ages 18-74 years. The healthy lifestyles that they were looking for included these four items:

• Do you currently smoke?
• Do you eat fruits and vegetables 5 times a day?
• Is your BMI* (body mass index) 18-25?
• Do you exercise for at least 30 minutes 5 or more times a week?

If you found yourself answering "no" to most of these questions, you are not alone. About 9.4% of the population doesn't follow any of the healthy lifestyles, 39.6% follow one, 34.2% follow two, 13.8% follow three and only 3% follow all four. In fact, 3% is the identical result obtained from the Nurses' Health Study when it looked at how many of their respondents followed healthy lifestyle recommendations. For those that did, that study found a significant reduction in heart disease and diabetes.

When responses to each question are broken out individually, this is how the results look:

• 76% do not smoke
• 40% have a healthy weight
• 23% eat their fruits and vegetables
• 22% get regular exercise

Clearly, medical professionals like me have a lot to do to foster adoption of healthy lifestyles that prevent the development of chronic diseases. These are simple measures that each of us can do. Please consider ways to change your lifestyle in a healthier direction and talk to your doctor about how he/she can help get you there.

* BMI = weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters.