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More Than A Third Of All Global Cancer Cases Are Preventable Through Lifestyle Changes, WHO Says 

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According to a new study and analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO), more than a third of all cancer cases globally are preventable. There are several ways in which we can reduce the odds of many different kinds of cancers developing, and a lot of it has to do with our overall lifestyle habits. 

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The organization wrote that lung, stomach, and cervical cancers make up nearly half of those cases, meaning that millions of deadly cancers every year could be prevented through medical intervention, behavior changes, reducing occupational risks, and/or combatting environmental pollutants, according to ScienceAlert. 

The study itself was published in Nature Medicine.

“Addressing these preventable causes represents one of the most powerful opportunities to reduce the global cancer burden,” says Isabelle Soerjomataram, medical epidemiologist at WHO and senior author of the analysis.

The specific analysis found that in 2022 there were about 19 million new cases of cancer, and about 38% of those diagnoses were related to 30 changeable risk factors. 

It was reported that these risk factors include “tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high body mass index, insufficient physical activity, smokeless tobacco (like chewing tobacco), a traditional stimulant known as areca nut, suboptimal breastfeeding, air pollution, ultraviolet radiation, infectious agents, and over a dozen occupational exposures.”

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Smoking tobacco was the number one preventable factor associated with cancer, and was linked to 15% of all cancer cases in 2022. 

For men specifically this risk was particularly high, and smoking contributed to 23% of all new cancer cases globally in men that year. 

Air pollution also plays a major role in cancer cases, and varies by region. In East Asia, it was reported that around 15% of all lung cancer cases in women were due to air pollution. In Northern Africa and Western Asia, about 20% of all lung cancer cases in men were also due to air pollution. 

Drinking alcohol was the second changeable lifestyle factor that was linked to 3.2% (around 700,000) of all new cancer cases. 

Certain infections within the body were also linked to about 10% of new cancer cases. In women, the largest share of preventable cancers were due to high-risk human papillomavirus, or HPV, which has been known to potentially lead to cervical cancer. 

“By examining patterns across countries and population groups, we can provide governments and individuals with more specific information to help prevent many cancer cases before they start,” says André Ilbawi, WHO Team Lead for Cancer Control and co-author of the analysis.

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Study Finds Even Two Cigarettes a Day Can Significantly Raise Heart Disease Risk

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A new long-term analysis is challenging common assumptions about “light smoking,” suggesting that even very small amounts of tobacco exposure may substantially heighten the risk of heart disease and premature death.

The research, published Tuesday in PLOS Medicine, followed more than 320,000 U.S. adults for nearly two decades. Johns Hopkins University scientists found that just two cigarettes per day or as few as 100 cigarettes across an entire lifetime were tied to markedly worse health outcomes.

Overall mortality was 60% higher among people who smoked at this low level compared with individuals who had never smoked. Their risk of developing heart disease was 50% higher, the study reported.

Cardiologists say the findings reinforce what decades of research have already hinted at: that even small doses of tobacco can undermine cardiovascular health.

“Tobacco use is a very well-established risk factor for heart disease,” said Dr. Jennifer Miao, a cardiologist at Yale University and an ABC News Medical Unit fellow.

“It really damages the blood vessel lining, and it accelerates the development of plaques and coronary artery disease.”

She noted that tobacco exposure is also associated with problems like atrial fibrillation and stroke.

One of the study’s most concerning observations is that simply reducing cigarette consumption didn’t appear to erase the long-term consequences. Current smokers faced the highest dangers, but even former smokers carried elevated heart disease risks in some cases, persisting more than twenty years after quitting.

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Dr. Erfan Tasdighi, the study’s co-author and an internal medicine physician at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, said the results should push clinicians to counsel patients toward full cessation, not merely reduction, because “no amount” appears safe.

“We actually have the evidence to say that even less than one cigarette a day can increase different multiple cardiovascular outcomes, and it’s not something that’s clinically insignificant.”

Despite dramatic drops in overall smoking rates in the United States, from about 42% of adults in 1965 to roughly 12% in 2022, according to the American Lung Association, the landscape of smoking has changed. The share of people who smoke fewer than 15 cigarettes per day has increased 85% over the same period, representing a growing group of “light smokers” who may underestimate their risks.

“In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of people who still smoke, but smoke less. As smoking patterns shift with more people smoking fewer cigarettes, it’s important to understand the cardiovascular risks of low-intensity smoking and the long-term benefits of quitting,” said study author Michael J. Blaha, M.D., M.P.H.

“This study, reflecting more than 320,000 U.S. adults over 20 years, gives us the statistical power to see relationships that other smaller studies cannot.”

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These shifting patterns mean physicians must adapt how they evaluate tobacco exposure, the authors argued. Traditional metrics, such as the number of packs smoked a year, may overlook the dangers of intermittent or low-intensity smoking.

“Clinicians need a more nuanced approach that incorporates other ways to identify and quantify cigarette use, like smoking status and smoking intensity,” Miao said.

Still, experts emphasize the difficulty many people face when trying to stop smoking entirely.

“It’s very, very important for us as clinicians to acknowledge that it’s a lot easier said than done.”

Miao encourages physicians to identify smokers who are struggling and connect them with cessation medications, counseling services, and other evidence-based support.

The researchers reported that the benefits of quitting accumulate most dramatically in the first decade after cessation. Yet even as the body begins healing right away, it may take many years for former smokers to approach the risk levels of people who never smoked.

Tasdighi stressed that early improvements shouldn’t be underestimated. “It’s important that people know that when they stop smoking, their risk goes down immediately and significantly,” he said.

Miao agreed, saying the research’s biggest message is straightforward. “It’s important to quit smoking early on, and no amount of smoking is without risk and health consequences,” she said.

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Supreme Court Rejects Tobacco Industry’s Bid To Remove Graphic Images On Cigarette Packs

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On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from major tobacco companies to the Food and Drug Administration’s requirement to display graphic images as health warnings on cigarette packages. 

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In 2020, the FDA rules that cigarette packages and advertisements must include health warnings that take 50% of the area of the front and back panels of the packages and at least 20% of the area on top of cigarette ads. 

There are 11 text-and-image graphics that the FDA created. One example shows a human lung that reads “WARNING: Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers.”

Another shows a young boy holding an oxygen mask that states: “WARNING: Tobacco smoke can harm your children.”

Major tobacco companies sued against this choice, arguing that the warnings run “afoul of the First Amendment and that the agency violated federal rulemaking procedures when it issued it,” according to Devan Cole of CNN.

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While a federal judge in Texas initially agreed with the companies and got rid of the rule, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in favor of the FDA. 

The appeals court stated that the FDA’s rule “passes constitutional muster” citing a Supreme Court standard that allows the government to compel commercial speech as long as it’s “purely factual, uncontroversial, justified by a legitimate state interest, and not unduly burdensome.”

Lawyers for the tobacco companies stated that the illustrations “are designed to shock rather than inform, because the massive and inflammatory graphics go far beyond what would be necessary to communicate a simple factual message.”

The Biden administration said that the appeals court was correct in their ruling to revive and maintain the rule “because the warnings are reasonably related to the government’s interest in promoting public understanding of those risks (associated with tobacco) and are not unduly burdensome.”

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Study States 8 Lifestyle Habits Can Add Up Over Two Decades To Your Life 

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According to a new unpublished study that analyzed data from US veterans, adding eight healthy lifestyle habits to your life between the ages of 40 and 60 could extend your life by up to 24 years, depending on what age you begin implementing the habits. 

Even on the older end, the study states that if you start implementing the habits at age 60, you could still potentially gain 18 years to your life. 

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“There’s a 20-year period in which you can make these changes, whether you do it gradually or all at once. We also did an analysis to see if we eliminated people with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, cancer and the like, does it change the outcome? And it really didn’t, so, if you start off with chronic diseases, making changes does still help,” said lead study author Xuan-Mai Nguyen, a health science specialist for the Million Veteran Program at the VA Boston Healthcare System. 

The habits are relatively well-known: eat a healthy diet, exercise, maintain low stress levels, keep positive social relationships, get a full night’s sleep, don’t smoke, don’t drink in excess, and avoid hard drugs/opioids. While these habits may seem rather obvious, it’s important to understand just how much of a difference they can make in your life, and it’s encouraging to know that it’s never too late in life to make the changes. 

“The earlier the better, but even if you only make a small change in your 40s, 50s or 60s, it still is beneficial. This is not out of reach — this is actually something attainable for the general population,” Nguyen said. 

The study was presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, Nutrition 2023, and it showed how the study looked at the lifestyle behaviors of around 720,000 military veterans between the ages of 40 and 99. 

“Adding just one healthy behavior to a man’s life at age 40 provided an additional 4.5 years of life. Adding a second led to seven more years, while adopting three habits prolonged life for men by 8.6 years. As the number of additional lifestyle changes climbed, so did the benefits for men, adding up to nearly a quarter century of extra life,” Nguyen said, according to CNN. 

Nguyen went on to explain how women saw major changes in life span as well. “Adopting just one healthy behavior added 3.5 years to a woman’s life, while two added eight years, three 12.6 years and embracing all the healthy habits extended a woman’s life by 22.6 years.”

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“Doing all eight had a synergistic effect, sort of an added boost to extend your life, but any small change made a difference,” Nguyen said.

“An important strength of this analysis was that the population was highly diverse by race, ethnicity, and SES (socioeconomic status),” said senior study author and leading nutrition researcher Dr. Walter Willett.

The study also ranked all eight habits in order from which could give the largest increase in longevity, the following percentages were all taken from the study itself: 

  1. Exercise: “We looked at whether they did light, moderate or vigorous activity compared to not doing anything and just sitting on the couch. People who lived longer did 7.5 metabolic equivalent hours of exercise a week. Just to give you a baseline — if you can walk up a flight of stairs without losing your breath, that’s four minutes of the 7.5,” Nguyen said.
  2. Staying away from/not becoming addicted to opioids can reduce the risk of an earlier death by 38%.
  3. Never using tobacco can reduce the risk of death by 29%.
  4. Managing stress and reducing your daily stress levels can reduce early death by 22%.
  5. Eating a plant based diet could increase your chances of living a longer life by 21%.
  6. Avoiding excessive drinking and binge drinking, having more than four alcoholic drinks per day, could reduce your risk of death by 19%.
  7. Getting enough sleep every night, at least seven to nine hours a night with no insomnia, can reduce early death from other causes by 18%.

Having and maintaining positive social relationships can help life longevity by 5%. “Five percent may seem small, but that’s still a decrease in terms of all-cause mortality. Every little bit helps, whether you pick physical activity or make sure you’re surrounded by positive social support,” Nguyen said.

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FDA Orders Juul To Stop Selling E-Cigarette Products

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On Thursday, federal health officials from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Juul to remove its electronic cigarettes from the U.S. market as it continues to battle against the popular and addictive products that have seen high usage amongst teen groups.

Under the ruling, Juul cannot sell its e-cigarette device, along with its four kinds of tobacco and menthol-flavored Juul pods. It’s a move that dates back to April, when the FDA gained the ability to regulate e-cigarettes and other products that utilize synthetic nicotine.

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“Today’s action is further progress on the FDA’s commitment to ensuring that all e-cigarette and electronic nicotine delivery system products currently being marketed to consumers meet our public health standards,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, said.

“We recognize these make up a significant part of the available products and many have played a disproportionate role in the rise in youth vaping.”

The ban only affects the commercial distribution, importation, and retail sales of Juul’s products and not those currently owned and used by a consumer. Juul had previously sought approval from the FDA in regards to its device and pods.

However, the FDA noted that Juul lacked “sufficient evidence” regarding the toxicological profile of their products in order to show their marketing would be appropriate for public health. Additionally, Juul’s studies also raised questions due to conflicting data — particularly in regard to genotoxicity and potential chemicals leaking from their pods — that were not addressed.

While the FDA said it didn’t receive any information that suggests an immediate hazard associated with using Juul products, their ban shows that the lack of health data played a critical part in the regulatory process.

E-cigarettes have become a staple of the country’s current youth. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), a 2021 survey found that 43.6% of high school students and 17.2% of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes on 20 or more of the last 30 days. One in four high schools smoke e-cigarettes daily, while that number is one in 12 for middle schoolers.

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The study also found that 53.7% used a disposable device, while 28.7% used a prefilled or refillable pod or cartridge device. Juul was found to have been the fourth-most used brand among students at 6.8% (130,000) behind Puff Bar, Vuse, and SMOK.

It’s another blow for a company that has often been blamed for starting the e-cigarette epidemic. It’s seen its total revenue fall from $2 billion in 2019 — when it possessed 600,000 daily users under 21 — to $1.3 billion in 2021, while its market share has endured similar falls.

That decline in sales can also be attributed to the FDA, which banned flavored e-cigarettes in 2018. Altria, which purchased a 35% stake in Juul Labs for $12.8 billion in 2018, already felt the heat in the form of a 10% stock drop Wednesday. This year, Altria values that stake at $1.6 billion, just 13% of their original purchase.

Meanwhile, the FDA will continue to review and regulate other e-cigarette products, many of which have never been through the application process before. The administration previously stated it’s reviewing 6.5 million applications from 500 companies, and have already rejected over 950,000.

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Study Suggests Lifestyle Changes Reduce A Woman’s Risk Of Stroke

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A new study performed has determined that even in their middle age, women are way less likely to suffer from a stroke if they begin to adopt a healthy lifestyle at any point during adulthood. The research itself was performed by experts from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil. The teams used data that’s been gathered as a part of an ongoing study in America called the “Nurses Health Study,” which focuses on investigating “risk factors for major chronic diseases in women.” 

Thanks to data from that study, the researchers had access to health information from over 59,000 women, all of which consented to being involved in these projects. The data provided information regarding each women’s smoking status, exercise/eating habits, as well as their body mass index (BMI), which is a number that represents how healthy one is based on height, weight, and age. Within the Nurses Health Study specifically, all of the women were around 50-years-old when they began, and they remained in the study for an average of 25 years. 

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The findings were published in a journal from the American Stroke Association, called Stroke, and found that 4.7% of the women who made no lifestyle changes at all throughout their 26 years in the study had a stroke of some kind; “2.4 percent experiencing ischemic stroke and 0.7 percent having a hemorrhagic stroke.”

Besides healthier eating habits, the “lifestyle changes” that researchers were looking for specifically focused on those who quit smoking, began doing 30 minutes of exercise a day, and lost weight if they were considered to be overweight from a health officials perspective. If the women made these three specific changes, the study suggests that they could reduce their risk of stroke by up to 25%.

If the women just adopted healthier eating habits, they reduced their stroke risk by 23%. Goodarz Danaei, one of the lead authors of the study, also suggested that by increasing things like fish and nuts in ones diet, while also reducing the amount of unprocessed red meat you eat, would also decrease the risk of stroke in women.

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“We found that changing to a healthy lifestyle, even in your 50s, still has the potential to prevent strokes. Women who made lifestyle modifications in middle age reduced their long-term risk of total stroke by nearly a quarter and ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, by more than one-third,” Danaei said.

Danaei then emphasized that this was simply an observational study, so the data isn’t necessarily concrete enough to make a direct correlation between these specific lifestyle changes and risk of stroke, however, as most studies/professionals will tell you, a healthy life in general will likely lead to less medical ailments/conditions down the road.

Danaei said “there are other studies to support that the proportional changes in stroke risk from lifestyle and dietary modifications may be generalizable to men. We also estimate that exercising 30 minutes or more daily may reduce the risk of stroke by 20 percent.”

With a global pandemic on all of our plates, now really is the perfect time to begin practicing healthier habits in our day-to-day proceedings. It can be so easy to get couch-locked with a bag of chips and candy, but try to start doing little things every day to lead you to a happier and healthier life once all of this is over.

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5 Healthy Habits That Can Help You Live A Decade Longer: Study Suggests

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In a massive study conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, researchers and health experts alike studied the impact of healthy lifestyle habits and life expectancy. The individuals involved in conducting the study had access to medical data that provided a huge pool of subjects with decades worth of medical records to go through. When all was said and done researchers were able to draw conclusions using data from over 120,000 participants; 34 years worth of records from 78,000+ women, and 28 years worth of records from 40,000+ men. 

The researchers specifically focused on five areas of life/health: diet, physical activity/exercise, body weight, smoking, and alcohol intake. The data regarding these five categories was collected through a series of regularly administered questionnaires that would be validated through a multitude of actual medical records; all participants completely consented to the study. These five particular categories were chosen because, based on the death rates in America, these five areas pose the largest risk of premature death when attributed with unhealthy habits. 

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Obviously, researchers also had to take every individuals specific genetic make up into consideration as well, so they took data on age, ethnicity, medication use, and other health conditions as well. Within the study this is how researchers defined “healthy habits” within each of the five categories. 

  1. Healthy diet, calculated based on the reported intake of healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, healthy fats, and omega-3 fatty acids, and unhealthy foods like red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fat, and sodium.
  2. Healthy physical activity level, which was measured as at least 30 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous activity daily.
  3. Healthy body weight, defined as a normal body mass index (BMI), which is between 18.5 and 24.9.
  4. Smoking, “Healthy” here means never having smoked.
  5. Moderate alcohol intake, measured as between 5 and 15 grams per day for women, and 5 to 30 grams per day for men. Generally, one drink contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol. That’s 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.

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Once the study was concluded, researchers determined that healthy habits make a huge difference in terms of life expectancy, and not in the obvious sense. The analysis showed that women who met the criteria for all five healthy habits lived, on average, 14 years longer than those who didn’t; for men it was a 12 year difference. If an individual didn’t meet the criteria for any of these healthy habits, they were much more likely to die prematurely from either cancer or cardiovascular disease; the two top causes of death in the world in terms of disease. 

Beyond these results, the study also concluded that if any of the subjects adopted just one of the healthy habits listed above their life expectancy would likely be prolonged by two years, regardless of gender, especially if they were over the age of 50. 

The experts behind this study want the individuals who observe the results to take away a very specific message. In America, our health care focus is too concentrated on fancy and expensive medications to combat deadly disease as opposed to ways of preventing those diseases in the first place. This isn’t the first time in which experts have stated that the best, and easiest, way to inspire the masses to adopt healthier lifestyle habits is through “public health efforts and policy changes.” 

While we wait for those systematic changes to occur, however, it’s never too late to make even the slightest of changes to our lifestyles to give us the best shot at living a long and healthy life. Start slow, as the data stated even one habit adoption can add two years to your life, so what are you waiting for?

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Study Finds That a Healthy Lifestyle can Add a Decade of Life Free From Disease

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Everyone knows that practicing healthy habits, such as dieting, exercising, and avoiding cigarettes, can extend one’s life span and improve one’s quality of life. However, it can be difficult to conceptualize exactly how much of a benefit these habits offer in one’s life, as it’s easy for these metrics to become somewhat abstract. As such, a study published in the British Medical Journal sought to quantify exactly how much a healthy lifestyle benefits one’s life, and found that practicing a healthy lifestyle can expand one’s disease-free lifespan by an average of ten years.

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The study looked at five factors associated with a healthy lifestyle, which included drinking alcohol in moderation, not smoking, exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy weight, and eating well. The study, which looked at more than 100,000 people, found that people who practiced four of these five traits lived as much as ten years longer without diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, than people who practiced none of these habits. Not only does a healthy lifestyle allow people to live longer lives, but the quality of life increases when people practice healthy lifestyle habits, as the risk of developing diseases decreases dramatically.

Specifically, the study found that women who practiced any four of the five traits in question lived an average of 84 years without disease, whereas women who practiced none of the five habits only lived an average of 74 years without disease. Likewise, men with four out of the five healthy habits lived to 81 years old without disease, whereas men who practiced none of the healthy habits lived to 73 years old without disease. The most unhealthy characteristics a person can have, the study found, were smoking more than 15 cigarettes a day or having a BMI greater than 30, which is defined as obesity.

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While the study shows that moderate drinking is far healthier than heavy drinking, it’s important to note that other studies have shown that no amount of alcohol is good for you, despite persistent rumors that suggest that having a glass of wine with dinner can improve one’s health. In fact, using recreational drugs at all is widely considered to have either a neutral or a negative impact on one’s health, and definitely not a positive one. Instead of relying on drugs as a method of reducing stress, doctors recommend other methods that help to both relieve stress and improve health. Regular exercise, for instance, has been shown to improve one’s overall mood, and meditation, a practice whereby people focus on paying attention to their experiences in the present moment, can improve mental health as well. If, like most people, you’re concerned about extending the longevity and quality of your life, it’s not a bad idea to think about the various ways in which your current lifestyle habits might contribute to disease and develop strategies to improve your lifestyle habits.

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Life Expectancy in America Declining According to Latest Study

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A study published in the journal JAMA has highlighted some reasons behind the latest news that life expectancy in the United States has started decreasing, despite having been on the increase for several years.

The study discovered that Americans between the ages of 25 and 64, or “working age,” are dying younger due to a combination of suicide, hypertension, and drug abuse as well as over 30 more different causes.

It has also been discovered that other wealthy countries around the world have a longer life expectancy to those in the US, which appears to be declining at a dramatic rate. And with working age adults seeing the biggest increase in deaths Steven H. Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine believes it is a “distinctly American phenomenon.”

Woolf, who is co-author of the study alongside Heidi Schoomaker, explained that “death rates among working age adults are on the rise. We have known for years that the health of Americans is inferior to that of other wealthy nations, but our research shows that the decline in US health relative to other countries began as early as the 1980s.”

Both Woolf and Schoomaker looked at over 50 years worth of US life expectancy data with the results appearing to show that although life expectancy began to rise annually between 1959 and 2014, these figures stabilized around 2011 before declining again.

And America’s relationship with opioid abuse seems to be one of the main reasons, along with suicide and alcohol abuse, especially among young and middle aged adults. The figures increased amongst those who did not finish high school.

Strangely, the decline in life expectancy was higher in areas including Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont – all in New England, while those living in the “Ohio Valley” – Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana – were also affected.

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The rise of the opioid epidemic appears to be one of the main reasons in these areas, especially since the collapse of the manufacturing industries that were a strong source of income in the regions. In fact, since 2010 over one third of “excess deaths” were reported from the Ohio Valley states since.

However those living along the Pacific coast – Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington – saw their life expectancy increase during 2010 and 2017.

The authors of the report claims that data from previous years shows that Americans began to slip behind those in other countries as far back as the early 1980s.

“Historically this [period] was the beginning of the opioid epidemic, the shrinking of the middle class and the widening of income inequality,” Woolf said.

And although there were economic shifts around the world as a whole during this time, Woolf believes the lack of support experienced by struggling families contributed to the drop in America stating that “in other countries, families that fall on hard times have programs and services available to cushion the blow. In America, people often have to fend for themselves.”

With few social services to help families it may help us to understand why there was a larger increase in death among females as they “have even fewer support systems, and more childcare responsibilities.”

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Howard Koh commented on the study, saying that although the “most exhaustive and detailed analysis of this topic to date” has helped us find the main causes of death the citizens of America should start “embracing the leading causes of life.”

For instance, by looking at how social connections alongside strong communities are affecting our wellbeing.

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“Other countries spend relatively more in terms of social services. Health is much more than what happens in a doctor’s office. It starts where people live, learn, labor and pray.”

So what can we do to improve our life expectancy? Harvard Medical School has a few suggestions and while most of them are both obvious and easier to do, some may have you asking why!

For instance, we all know that smoking, excessive drinking and drug abuse will seriously damage our health but did you know that people who have quit smoking could repair some of the damage caused by cigarettes, cigars and even marijuana?

Once you stop smoking your risk of heart disease starts to reduce after only a few months, matching that of a non-smoker after around 5 years. Likewise with strokes. Giving up tobacco can see a reduction in the risk of having a stroke within two to four years while the mortality rate from colorectal cancer also reduces each year.

And while these statistics apply to most people, quitting smoking before you reach 50 will make the health benefits stronger, sooner.

There have also been discussions on the dangers of vaping, with many calling for the fruit flavored options to be banned.

A healthy diet, keeping fit and building a good network around you are also key to keeping you healthy and strong and therefore living longer.

By doing these things we can hopefully turn the trend on the average American’s life span before we are in “a future in which declining life expectancy may be the new norm.”

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Research Shows Lifestyle Changes and Medicine as Effective as Surgery for Heart Disease

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According to a recent large study, stents and coronary artery bypass surgery are not more effective treatment options than intensive drug treatment and lifestyle changes that incorporate healthy habits, causing a new controversy in the medical field of cardiology. The subject of the best way to treat people with narrow coronary arteries has long been the subject of fierce discussion among doctors and researchers, with most doctors opting to implant stents into clogged arteries in order to treat people who have heart disease. Stents are tubes made out of wire mesh that force arteries open, allowing blood to flow more vigorously through the body. This type of surgery is very common, and it is even performed when patients have no symptoms or only experience pain after exerting themselves.

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The findings of the study were released on Saturday during the American Heart Association’s annual scientific conference, and the study was the largest and one of the most rigorous of its kind ever conducted. Though the study found that surgery is often lifesaving for people who had heart attacks, the procedure may be performed more often than is medically necessary, as less invasive options produce similar positive health outcomes in certain populations. Among these options are the use of drugs that lower cholesterol, which contributes to the buildup of plaque within the arteries, which in turn increases one’s risk of heart attack or stroke. Stents or bypass surgery, however, are more effective than drugs and lifestyle changes for frequent chest pain.

While the findings discourage the use of surgery in patients who are asymptomatic, they may also encourage the procedure in people who have frequent chest pain

The findings are likely to have an impact on the conversations doctors have with their patients about the best course of treatment for a wide range of heart problems. While lifestyle changes, combined with medicine, are the ideal treatment for people with heart disease who experience no or only minor symptoms, these changes can be difficult for patients to make and keep over time. Changing one’s diet, for instance, generally involves a significant shift in the way one thinks about food, and committing to an exercise routine can be especially challenging for people who are busy. Interventional cardiologists perform surgeries like stent procedures, whereas preventative cardiologists prescribe drugs and encourage lifestyle changes; these recent findings are likely to inspire disagreements between these two specializations.

While the findings discourage the use of surgery in patients who are asymptomatic, they may also encourage the procedure in people who have frequent chest pain, as implanting stents was shown to be effective both in reducing chest pain and lowering the risk of a cardiovascular event. The study also highlighted the importance of smoking cessation in reducing one’s risk for heart attacks and strokes, as quitting smoking is perhaps one of the most significant lifestyle changes a person can make to improve their health overall, especially as he or she ages. 

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While implanting stents is an effective treatment option in some cases, it is not totally effective; in the study, patients who had stents implanted suffered heart attacks at a rate of 5.3% whereas the group receiving medical therapy only underwent heart attacks at a rate of 3.4%. However, after four years had passed, the group with invasive procedures fared better than the other group, having heart attacks at a rate of 13.3% as opposed to 15.5%. While these findings need to be studied further, they may be the result of the fact that many people fail to maintain lifestyle changes over the course of several years. For treating chest pain, stents had a clear advantage over the other therapies, as they relieved chest pain in 50% of patients whereas medical and lifestyle therapy relieved chest pain in only 20% of patients. That being said, both options have been shown to be effective treatments for a number of heart problems, and thanks to modern medicine, people suffer from untreated heart issues at a lower rate than in the past.