Poor Lifestyle Choices Show Health Impact as Early as Mid-30s: Study Finds
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A new peer-reviewed study, published in the Annals of Medicine (Elevate) found that smoking and other vices like drinking and lack of exercise are associated with declines in health in people as young as 36. The impact is even greater when these bad habits are indulged in over the long-term, state experts whose study tracked the mental and physical health of hundreds of people for more than 30 years.
Using a long-running longitudinal study, in which hundreds of children who were born in the Finnish city of Jyväskylä in 1959 were followed from childhood until their early 60s, the team analyzed participants’ mental and physical health via data that was collected from surveys and medicals when they were 27 years old (326 participants) and again at age 36, 42, 50 and 61 (206 participants).
Mental health was assessed via surveys. Physical health was assessed by creating a metabolic risk score. Self-health was assessed by asking the participants to rate the state of their health over the past year. Three risky behaviours were also assessed at each point in time: smoking, heavy drinking and physical inactivity. Analysis of the results showed that if an individual had all three unhealthy habits at a given point in time, their mental and physical health were poorer.
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