How many Americans are actually leading a healthy lifestyle? The answer, as you may guess, is that although we know what we are supposed to do, not many of us do it.
Researchers set out to find out how we were doing by obtaining data from a national health survey. They surveyed 150,000 Americans in the year 2000 and published their results in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The researchers asked people about four healthy lifestyle characteristics: smoking, a healthy body weight, eating 3-5 vegetables or fruits a day and doing regular physical activity.
The envelope, please: 76 percent were non-smokers, 40 percent were at a healthy weight, 25 percent ate their fruits and vegetables and 22 percent worked out regularly.
But less than three percent -- three percent! -- had all four healthy lifestyle characteristics.
A lot of us know what we're supposed to do but aren't doing it. That's too bad because leading a healthy lifestyle helps prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer. Or, to put it another way: Lose weight, give up smoking, eat right, exercise regularly and you'll live longer.
