Quitting smoking and eating better may help people live a healthy life for longer, even if the changes are made after age 50, the British Heart Foundation says. (CBC) Men who smoke and have high blood pressure and high cholesterol at age 50 may reduce their life expectancy by nearly 10 years, a British study suggests. Researchers from Oxford University analyzed data from 19,000 male civil servants who were examined in the late 1960s when they were 40 to 69 years old. More than 7,000 participants who were still alive in 1997 were re-examined.
"This important study puts a figure on the life-limiting effects of smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol," said Prof. Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study reported in Friday's issue of the British Medical Journal.
"It provides a stark illustration of how these risk factors in middle age can reduce life expectancy. The good news is that all of us can make changes to help us live a healthy life for longer, even after 50."
Stopping smoking and reducing blood pressure and cholesterol through lifestyle changes or medication can prevent the onset of heart disease, Weissberg said.
Participants gave information about their medical history, lifestyle and smoking habits, and doctors recorded their weight, blood pressure, lung function, cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
Improving life expectancy
Middle-aged men with all three main risk factors for cardiovascular disease could expect to live almost a decade less, 74 years versus 83 for those with none of the risk factors, the researchers found.
Those with all three risk factors showed a three-fold higher rate of death from a heart-related problem than men without all three risk factors.
"Continued public health strategies to lower these risk factors could result in further improvements in life expectancy," the journal's editors said.
When the study began, current smokers made up 42 per cent of the participants, 39 per cent had high blood pressure and 51 per cent had high cholesterol. At re-examination, about two-thirds of smokers had quit.
Over the course of the study, 13,501 died.
Life expectancy at birth in Britain has increased from 69.3 years in the early 1970s to 77 in 2005.
But the absolute life expectancy among the study participants was greater than those of similar-aged men living in England and Wales during the same time, probably because of the "healthy worker effect" — lower overall death rates among the employed, since people who are ill and disabled may not be able to work.
The British findings on cardiovascular death rates were similar to those reported by the physicians' health study in the U.S., the researchers noted.
The results likely would also apply to women, Weissberg said.
The study was also funded by the British Medical Research Council.
