Women: Living Longer, Looking Younger

By Nicky Morris


Making key changes to your lifestyle can keep you looking younger and healthier.

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 researchers said about the purpose of study that: "Our goal was to assess the relative strength and joint contributions of factors on the risk of death in postmenopausal women". They were specifically examining the factors that were affecting life expectancy, which could easily be adjusted by simple changes to diet or increasing exercise.

What contributes most to a long life?

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

Of all the high risk factors, those that could be changed easily were: smoking, being overweight with fat stored in the abdominal area, being unfit, and having high blood pressure.

Ways to reduce these 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:

Begin exercising. All forms of exercise are good for you, in moderation of course. And did you know that even just a 30 minute walk each day has been proven to lower blood pressure, reduce the progression of dementia and diabetes, reduces depression and anxiety, as well as reducing arthritic pain. It also helps you lose weight, which takes us to the next points.

Drop a few dress sizes. The researchers noted in the study, that it's good to lose that 'tummy fat', as according to results of other studies, carrying fat around the waist is a key factor in increasing the risk 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.

Out of these four, the researchers raised smoking as one most damaging to your health. Smoking causes 25% of cancer deaths among women. The researchers said: "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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