Lifestyle Affects All-Cause Mortality

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Shakespeare in Romeo & Juliet

You like "po-tay-to" and I like "po-tah-to",
You like "to-may-to" and I like "to-mah-to";
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, to-may-to, to-mah-to!
Let's call the whole thing off!
George & Ira Gershwin, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

So what do the above two quotes have to do with today's study/topic?  Well, I've been meaning to point out this analysis of the National Health & Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) published online earlier this month & in print this week in JAMA in which the authors followed 44,959 adults for 14+years and concluded that meeting more cardiovascular metrics was associated with lower risk of all-cause & cardiovascular mortality, similar to previous findings from a subset of the same study published last August.  

And just what are these 7 so called cardiovascular metrics?  Not smoking, being physically active, eating a healthy diet, and having normal weight, blood pressure, blood glucose & total cholesterol levels.  If you ask me, the first 3 out of the 7 metrics appear to be lifestyle issues while the remaining 4 are consequences or at least partially modifiable by the first 3.

From my perspective as a lumper rather than a splitter, I'd conclude that all these studies point towards the same conclusion: lifestyle affects all-cause mortality.  Let's start improving ours!

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