Smoking, drinking and not exercising, They negatively impact your Health from 36 yearsaccording to a recent study in Finland.
The study by the University of Applied Sciences Laurea, in Finland, and published in the Annals of Medicine magazine, the negative effects are not only physical, but also mental.
This research followed the mental and physical health of hundreds of people for more than 30 years. Other previous studies followed medium -sized subjects for 20 years.
Following a long -term longitudinal study, hundreds of children were followed in 1959 in Jyväskylä, Finland. Medical data and exams were analyzed at age 27, then at 36, 41, 50 and 61. In the first analysis There were 326 participants and in the last 206according to Taylor and Francis Group.
Smoking, drinking and not exercising
Outside the exams, the three risk behaviors that were evaluated were smoking, drinking in excess and physical inactivity, that is, not exercising.
The study showed that those who combined these three factors, They had worse mental and physical healthcompared to those who did not.
Depressive symptoms increased by 0.1 points, the metabolic risk rose 0.53, psychological well -being fell 0.1 and self -perceived greeting descended 0.45 points. In the long term, these indicators increased.
Specifically, lack of exercise was related to the Bad physical healthsmoking with poor mental health and alcohol with the previous two.
Dr. Tiia Kekäläinen, the leading author of the study, said in a statement collected by New York Post, that “our findings highlight the importance of addressing health risk behaviors, such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and physical inactivity, as soon as possible, to prevent the damage from accumulating over the years.”
The study indicates that the accumulated association of early risk behaviors are already present at age 36 and not only in the phases of medium age, that is, people from before 36 already drink, smoke and do not exercise.
The average registered age where a deterioration of health begins to be noticed is from 36 years, however, this may vary according to people’s habits, so it is not ruled out that in some cases even begins before.
Reference:
– Kekäläinen, T., Ahola, J., Reinilä, E., Savikangas, T., Kinnunen, ML, Pitkänen, T., & Kokko, K. (2025). Cumulative Associations Between Health Behaviors, Mental Well-Being, and Health Over 30 Years. Annals of Medicine, 57 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/07853890.2025.2479233
