Fewer Americans Adhere To Healthy Lifestyle

By Margarita Nahapetyan

Health experts from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) report that fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to follow healthy lifestyle that includes exercise, eating a diet high in fruits and vegetables, moderate alcohol consumption and not smoking. The number of individuals who actually adhere to all five healthy habits has fallen from 15 per cent to just 8 per cent in the past ten years.

Researchers with the Department of Family Medicine, MUSC, collected the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. NHANES is a national survey of non-institutionalized individuals in the United States, conducted regularly by the National Center for Health Statistics. The experts compared the results of two large-scale studies of the U.S. population between 1988 and 1994 and between 2001 and 2006. More than 7,000 people took part in the survey each time.

The results revealed that in the intervening eighteen years, smoking rates among Americans have basically not changed - from 26.9 per cent of the population they dropped insignificantly to 26.1 per cent. The percentage of adults with the ages between 40 and 74 years and having a Body Mass Index (BMI) greater than 30, has risen from 28 per cent to 36 per cent. Physical activity and exercise 12 times or more during a month has dropped from 53 per cent to 43 per cent. Consuming five or more fruit and vegetable servings on a daily basis has dropped from 42 per cent of the population to 26 per cent. And, finally, alcohol consumption in moderate amounts has jumped from 40 per cent to 51 per cent.

Since individuals who were diagnosed with health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, or high levels of cholesterol were also participating in the survey, the investigators wanted to find out to what extent such adults were adhering to the healthy habits, compared to individuals without the above mentioned conditions, and whether the adherence had changed after a while. To their surprise, they found that people with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension or high cholesterol, or risk factors for those conditions, were no more likely to follow a healthy lifestyle, compared to people who did not have such risk factors.

Writing in the article, Dr. Dana E. King, MD, MS, a scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina and one of the report's authors, said that the healthier lifestyle individuals adhere to, the more health benefits they would gain at all ages, and especially at ages between 40 and 74 years, because this age span is the primary time for initial diagnosis of cardiovascular risk factors and disease.

Exercising on a regular basis along with a prudent diet can significantly reduce the risk of premature death and disability from a number of problematic conditions, such as coronary heart disease, for example, and are strongly associated with the risk of becoming obese, the experts said. Dr. King also noted that the results of their study reinforce the importance of promoting a healthy lifestyle since the medical costs due to physical inactivity and its consequences in the United States cost the society an estimated $76 billion a year.

The study will be published in the June 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.