How To Get An 80% Reduction In Risk Of Getting Chronic Disease

so my question was about earl ford study 2009 the journal at the time was called the archives of internal medicine it’s now jama internal medicine healthy living is the best revenge it was a nested cohort analysis within something called the epic trial which is a long multi-year prospective study in countries throughout europe looking at cancer and other chronic disease outcomes so what was interesting to me about the ford study is that it was the other side of the coin that launched my career in lifestyle medicine so i already told you about that first phase 1993 actual causes of death in the united states bill feige mike mcginnis 80 percent of all premature death and chronic disease is attributable to bad use of feet forks and fingers and almost 100 percent of premature death is explainable by modifiable factors

the ford study which came out in 2009 was survey analysis involving 23 000 people living in and around potsdam germany and the study focused on four factors do you smoke yes or no do you eat well yes or no in a very simplistic definition of that eating well was habitual intake of fruits vegetables and whole grains and not eating well was the absence of that are you physically active on a regular basis and that was also dichotomized yes or no and you have a healthy weight yes or no and they went on to compare the two ends of the spectrum over the multiple years of the study and you know back to pam’s contention that if we could put this in a pill it would be the best medicine the world has ever known so the people who had four good answers i don’t smoke i eat well i’m active my weight’s fine had an 80 percent lesser incidence of all major chronic disease over the multi-year span of the study than people who had four bad answers i smoke eat badly don’t exercise my weight’s not so good

if you flip the switch from bad to good on any one of these factors the probability of developing any major chronic disease went down about 50 percent but fire on all four cylinders it’s an apparent 80 percent reduction as best we know from other data sources it’s lifelong 80 percent reduction in the risk of ever getting heart disease cancer stroke diabetes dementia all the things we don’t want to have happen to us now some of these conditions are much more modifiable than others we could virtually eliminate type 2 diabetes we could virtually eliminate coronary disease we probably have a little less control over cancer but when you aggregate all major chronic disease and look at that as one variable 80 reduction by not smoking eating well being active healthy weight this was just one study but to me it was quite provocative because the mcginnis and feige study said here’s all the bad stuff that happens if you get these wrong the ford study was a beautiful rebuttal saying if you get them right here’s all the good stuff