Bad habits such as smoking, drinking in excess and lack of exercise should be addressed as soon as possible to increase the chances of having a happy and healthy old age. That is the message of a study, published in ‘Annals of Medicine’, which has seen that smoking and other vices are associated with the deterioration of health in young people of 36 years.
In addition, the impact is even greater when these bad habits are maintained for a long time, experts whose study followed the mental and physical health of hundreds of people for more than 30 years.
Previous investigations have monitored people since the middle age, usually for about 20 years. Studies conducted to date have shown that smoking and other aspects of a healthy lifestyle adapt before 30 years. However, in this new work, a Finnish research team wanted to track people from an earlier age and, at the same time, unravel the effect of unhealthy habits on mental health.
Using a long -term longitudinal study, in which hundreds of children born in the Jyväskylä Finnish city in 1959 were followed from childhood to 60 yearsthe team analyzed the mental and physical health of the participants through data collected from surveys and medical exams when they were 27 years old (326 participants) and again at 36, 42, 50 and 61 years (206 participants).
Mental health was evaluated by surveys on symptoms of depression and psychological well -being. Physical health was evaluated by creating a metabolic risk score based on blood pressure, the circumference of the waist and sugar, cholesterol levels and other blood fats.
In addition, participants were asked to qualify their health status during the last year.
They were also evaluated three risk behaviors at each moment: Smoking, drinking in excess (defined as consuming at least 7,000 g/875 alcohol units per year for women (700 glasses a year cups) and 10,000 g/1,250 units a year for men (1,000 cups)) and physical inactivity (exercise less than once a week).
-The results showed that if an individual had the three unhealthy habits (smoking, drinking a lot and being inactive) at a given time, his mental and physical health was worse than if he did not have any of these risk behaviors.
Keeping the three harmful long -term behaviors associated even more strongly with poor health.
Interconnected
Lack of exercise was related to poor physical health, smoking with poor mental health and excessive alcohol consumption was associated with a deterioration of both mental and physical health.
Fundamentally, the effects were evident when the participants were around 35 years.
«Non -communicable diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, cause almost three quarters of deaths worldwide», Says Tiia Kekäläinen, principal and scientific author of health with special interest in aging. “However, when leading a healthy lifestyle, you can reduce the risk of developing these diseases and the chances of dying prematurely.”
“Our findings highlight the importance of addressing health risk behaviors, such as smoking, drinking in excess and physical inactivity, as soon as possible to prevent the damage that they cause accumulate over the years and culminate in poor mental and physical health later in life.”
However, It is never too late to adopt healthier habits. Adopting healthier habits in medium age also has benefits in old age.
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