My Breakfast Smiles for Me

We’re Toast: 97% Don’t Have Healthy Lifestyles

File it under news you can use: apparently we’re all toast. Well, maybe 3% of us who actually have healthy lifestyles will be OK. But the rest of us can forget it. In a new study published by Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Paul Loprinzi and colleagues found that 97% of Americans cannot meet four simple criteria for a healthy lifestyle.

Their criteria were: physical activity, healthy eating, tobacco-free status, and body fat percentage. Only 2.7% met all four criteria.

Just to rub it in, they went on to analyze the relationship between these markers of a healthy lifestyle with markers for cardiovascular disease. Those included blood pressure, C-reactive protein, homocysteine, white blood cells, lipid profiles, and measures of diabetes risk. Offering a little ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy report, they did find that meeting just one or two of their healthy lifestyle hurdles could help.

If you’re in the righteous 3%, you can look knowingly at all the poor souls around you and know that they are doomed.

If not, you can look at all those runners and folks in their yoga togs and know they’re faking it.

“You’re in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.” — Dr. Seuss

Click here for the study and here for more from the Washington Post.

My Breakfast Smiles for Me, photograph © sizumaru / flickr

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March 23, 2016

2 Responses to “We’re Toast: 97% Don’t Have Healthy Lifestyles”

  1. March 23, 2016 at 8:33 am, Al Lewis said:

    And yet the age-adjusted heart attack rate has fallen by about 2/3 in the last 30 years while life expectancies have risen significantly

    • March 23, 2016 at 9:20 am, Ted said:

      Right, Al. But that was evil pharmaceuticals at work, peddling pills that reduce mortality.