Research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has shown dramatic reductions in heart disease from various diet and lifestyle factors. The study included 84,129 women who were healthy when enrolled in 1980.

The researchers classified several practices as part of lower risk behavior:

Women who qualified for all of these factors (3% of the total population) were found to have a risk factor for heart disease of only 17%, which is a greater than 5-fold reduction. In addition, each of the individual factors was also associated with a reduced risk as well.

New England Journal of Medicine 2000;343:16-22.

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