A leading medical expert has revealed four simple lifestyle changes that people in their 40s and 50s can make to slash their risk of heart attack by a staggering two-thirds. This advice holds true even for those already on medication for high blood pressure or cholesterol, who could significantly lower their chances of serious health complications.
Professor Eric Rimm, Director of the Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, shared this potentially life-saving advice during an appearance on the Zoe podcast. When asked by Zoe CEO Jonathan Wolf about the key steps to reducing heart attack risk, Prof Rimm explained: “Simple things like, you know, a healthy body weight, exercise, not smoking and a healthy diet. And in the healthy diet, we put in a little bit of alcohol for people that drink, but you can explain 60 to 80% of heart attacks.”
The professor emphasised that if everyone followed these four pieces of advice, 70 to 80% of heart attacks in women and 60 to 70% of heart attacks in men could be eliminated, which are the ‘number one killer’. He added: “So if you can get rid of something, 60 to 80% of it just by making healthier lifestyle choices.
And even in our studies in men and women, we see even people as you mentioned earlier who are in their forties and fifties and are making maybe taking medication for high blood pressure or high cholesterol, even though those populations that make healthy choices can get rid of 60% of their risk of heart attack.”
Mr Wolf asked, “I just want to make sure that you’re saying that even if you are in your forties or fifties and maybe you’ve got all of those risk factors or many of those if you make a real change to your lifestyle, you can really dramatically reduce your chance of having a heart attack.”
In response, Prof Rimm said it was ‘amazing’ that such changes could cause a whopping fourfold reduction in heart disease risk. He said: “50 to 70% of the heart disease that happens among people who are taking medicine, you could get rid of if people exercised, you know, had a healthy weight, had a good diet and didn’t smoke.”
When queried about how one should gauge their fitness level, he explained that his team assigns individuals a score ranging from 0 to 5 based on their lifestyle habits. For instance, incorporating half an hour of daily exercise or its equivalent distributed across the week (2.5 to 3.5 hours) into your routine earns you a point.
Conversely, getting anything less than that scores you zero. Consumption of a nutritious diet (falling within the top 40 per cent of people) gets a point, while refraining from smoking equates to one point and smoking results in a zero.
Prof Rimm explained the scoring system for heart disease risk, stating: “So these are just relatively simple cutoffs and we were just counting people. So you could have a zero all the way up to a five. And if you had a five, which means you were healthy in all of those and therefore your risk of heart disease was 3 to 4 times lower than people who are zeros and it was still 2 to 3 times lower than people who are one. So it’s, and it’s a beautiful, very nice linear scale. The more healthy things you have the lower your risk of heart disease.”
