BY: SWIKAR OLI
You may want to stand up for this. And maybe wear some running shoes and run a few laps around the block. A new study has found that laziness, sleeping too much or not enough are all risk factors just like smoking or excessive drinking.
The study’s researchers were able to predict the likelihood of death based on participants’ six lifestyle choices (smoking, alcohol use, diet and sedentariness, sleep and exercising habits). As the study indicates, a sedentary lifestyle is by itself bad enough for you, but pair it with heavy drinking and smoking, and the risk of death as compared to someone who is living cleanly goes up five-fold. Sleeping less than seven hours, or more than nine, are also both risk factors.
Smoking was, as ever, the biggest risk factor, making it 90 percent likelier for users to die during the research period. The second biggest risk factor of the six, lack of exercise, may be surprising considering the list also includes heavy alcohol use, but, as new a piece of research indicates, simply being lazy can have extreme health effects, shrinking the brain of a study’s middle aged participants.
The news comes at a time when, for the first time in history, humans are dying more from non-communicable disease (NCDs) than infectious diseases. Cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and other NCDs are responsible for 63 percent in annual deaths. The likelihood of having diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers, can be radically reduced by making important lifestyle changes, such as eating better and exercising.
The 45 and Up Study, which was published in PLOS Medicine, followed 231,048 Australians between 2006-2009. For a link to the study, click here.
