Creating healthy habits, such as losing weight and kicking your cigarette habit in your 30s and 40s, could potentially reverse the natural progression of heart disease.
Deciding to embrace healthy lifestyle changes can control and perhaps even undo damage to a person’s heart, suggests lead investigator Bonnie Spring, a professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Not too late
“It’s not too late. You’re not doomed if you’ve hit young adulthood and acquired some bad habits. You can still make a change, and it will have a benefit for your heart,” Spring said in a statement on Tuesday. Likewise, if you fail to maintain a healthy lifestyle after the age of 30, “you’ll see the evidence in terms of your risk of heart disease,” she added.
The study authors looked at 5 000 patients who were enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study.
They examined five different types of healthy behaviors – not being overweight or obese, consuming low amounts of alcohol, maintaining a healthy diet, being physically active, and being a non-smoker – in each, as well as coronary artery calcification and thickening among each of the participants.
Each subject was assessed at baseline when they were between the ages of 18 and 30, and again 20 years later. At the beginning of the study, less than 10% of CARDIA participants said they engaged in all five healthy lifestyle behaviors. Two decades later, about 25% of them had added at least one additional healthy behavior.
Healthy Lifestyle Factors
Every additional healthy lifestyle factor was linked to reduced odds of two major markers that can predict future cardiovascular events – detectable coronary artery calcification and lower intima-media thickness. Spring said that the findings were important because they helped to debunk a pair of commonly held health-care myths.
“The first is that it’s nearly impossible to change patients’ behaviors. Yet, we found that 25% of adults made healthy lifestyle changes on their own,” she explained.
“The second myth is that the damage has already been done – adulthood is too late for healthy lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of developing coronary artery disease. Clearly, that’s incorrect. Adulthood is not too late for healthy behavior changes to help the heart.”
On the flip side, 40% of the study participants lost healthy lifestyle factors, acquiring more bad habits as they grew older. Spring said that this had “a measurable negative impact on their coronary arteries,” increasing their risk of detectable coronary artery calcification and higher intima-media thickness.
The researchers said that their findings demonstrate that healthy changes made by people in their 30s and 40s, such as maintaining a healthy body weight, cutting back on sodium, and regularly participating in moderate physical activity, must be sustained.
As Spring explained, “Adulthood isn’t a ‘safe period’ when one can abandon healthy habits without doing damage to the heart. A healthy lifestyle requires upkeep to be maintained.”