These tendencies are derailing your best efforts at living better and longer.
We all have them: Those less-than-healthy or downright dangerous habits that can subtract years from our lives. Most of these harmful tendencies--like smoking and eating poorly--are well-known thanks to the constant finger-wagging of physicians and public-health officials. Others, like taking chances with safety and skipping immunizations, are less obvious.
While circumstance, low motivation or even lack of support can derail our best attempts at being healthy, there is hope: According to a recent study published in the American Journal of Medicine, a sizable percentage of people can successfully adopt a range of healthy activities or habits in middle age.
The study looked at 15,708 adults between the ages of 45 and 64. More than 8% of the participants began eating at least five fruits and vegetables daily, exercised a minimum of 2.5 hours per week, maintained healthy weights and refrained from smoking.
Dr. Dana E. King, a co-author of the study and vice chair in the department of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, considers these four habits to be the pillars of good health. And the study proved as much: Those who changed their lifestyles experienced lower total mortality and fewer cardiovascular disease events.
"These changes are not easy to make and our environment is not encouraging," King says. "But making them is very beneficial."
The Cost of Bad Habits
Smoking and excessive weight gain are particularly pernicious since they've been linked to a range of bad health outcomes, including cancer and heart disease. They're also expensive habits when it comes to the cost of health care. Expenditures related to smoking reach as much as $96 billion annually. Obesity is estimated to cost $90 billion, and it may get pricier. A report published this month by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that adult obesity rates had increased in 23 states from 2006 and 2008.
While smoking and obesity are prime targets for public-health officials, patients can improve their health in other ways. Mary Jean Schumann, a registered nurse and chief programs officer for the American Nurses Association, says that routine immunizations are cost-effective and promote excellent health. More than 20 diseases can be prevented by vaccines, including Hepatitis B, diphtheria, mumps and influenza.
Yet survey results published last year by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, a non-profit organization, found that few Americans know which vaccines are recommended for adults--and more than half are unconcerned about contracting a vaccine-preventable disease.
Simple high-risk behaviors, like not wearing a helmet while riding a bike or not buckling up while driving or riding in a car, are other, less-scrutinized bad habits.
"People don't look at those as health behaviors, but they are," says Schumann, who has treated countless patients in the emergency room with injuries from accidents that could have been prevented.
Changing Behaviors
Even though common sense says unhealthy choices result in poor outcomes, people tend to have difficulty connecting the two. And even when they do, it can be a long-term struggle to end the pattern.
"[People] have good intentions but can't seem to pull off the changes," says Suzanne Havala Hobbs, a clinical associate professor of health policy and management and nutrition at the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health.
She attributes that dynamic to a combination of factors: suburban and urban infrastructures that don't promote physical activity; a sense of fatalism that sets in when people tire of fighting what can seem like a losing battle; and a lack of support from friends and family.
While individuals have no power over city planning, they can tackle the other two issues. Waning motivation to lose weight, for instance, can be remedied by doing enjoyable physical activities instead of committing to a rigid and joyless routine at the gym. Enlisting the support of loved ones is another essential strategy since it can turn smoking cessation or healthier eating into a family affair as opposed to an individual struggle.
Despite these tactics, some people face greater health-improvement challenges than others. In Dr. King's study, those who were at risk for chronic conditions were no more likely to make changes.
"We have to find out what the real motivators are for people," he says, mostly because improved health is within the reach of most. "Turning back the clock can be done."
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