Healthy Lifestyle Reduces Heart-Failure Risk in Postmenopausal Women

Reductions in risk became even larger, in a continuous, graded manner, with higher numbers of healthy behaviors.

Whether a healthy lifestyle reduces incident heart failure (HF) is poorly understood. To evaluate the effect of individual lifestyle factors and a combination of lifestyle factors on incident HF, investigators assessed 84,537 postmenopausal women from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) observational study who were free of self-reported HF at baseline.

Participants were assessed using a healthy-lifestyle (HL) scoring system, in which they received 1 point for each of the following criteria: healthy eating, physical activity, healthy body-mass index, and not smoking. A weighted HL score was also created in which each lifestyle factor was weighted based on its association with incident HF.

During a mean 11 years of follow-up, 1826 HF cases occu…

Reviewing Author

JoAnne M. Foody, MD

Disclosures

Consultant / Advisory boardAegerion; Amarin; Bristol-Myers Squibb; Janssen; Merck; Pfizer; Sanofi-Aventis; Boehringer Ingelheim

Leadership positions in professional societiesAmerican College of Cardiology, Cardiosmart (Co-chair)

JoAnne M. Foody, MD

Disclosures

Consultant / Advisory boardAegerion; Amarin; Bristol-Myers Squibb; Janssen; Merck; Pfizer; Sanofi-Aventis; Boehringer Ingelheim

Leadership positions in professional societiesAmerican College of Cardiology, Cardiosmart (Co-chair)

Healthy Lifestyle Reduces Heart-Failure Risk in Postmenopausal Women

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Reviewing Author