Almost a third of coronary heart disease (CHD) events in men could be avoided if the patient is physically fit, does not smoke and has a normal waste girth, according to a large-scale study conducted in the United States.
The research, published in the latest edition of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, has revealed astounding effects of three factors – fitness, weight and smoking – on heart disease in men.
Analysing the medical evaluations of 23,657 men aged between 30 and 79 years, the researchers concluded that smokers who were unfit and overweight cut their life expectancy by an average of 14.2 years.
"To address health promotion and disease prevention strategies, it is important to increase healthy low-risk populations, which is a key to CHD prevention," the study's authors wrote.
They found that the three factors contributed to a 59 per cent lower risk of CHD events, a 77 per cent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) and a 69 per cent lower risk of all-cause mortality, while even adhering to one or two of the three would have an effect on heart health.
Around half of CHD episodes could have been avoided if the patient also had lipid levels and blood pressure at target levels without diabetes, the study found.
"Men with two or three combined low-risk factors had lower blood lipid levels (total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides), blood pressures (systolic and diastolic), fasting glucose levels and lower frequencies of diabetes and cigarette smoking, all of which may contribute to slowing the progression of early atherosclerosis," the authors wrote.