This interesting paper examines the potential combined contribution of a healthy diet and lifestyle factors in preventing myocardial infarction (MI) in a large sample of 24,444 post-menopausal women from the population-based prospective Swedish Mammography Cohort who were initially free of diagnosed cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes mellitus at baseline. Three low-risk lifestyle factors were identified: being a non-smoker, having a low waist-hip circumference ratio, and being physically active (i.e., at least 40 minutes of daily walking or bicycling and 1 hour of weekly exercise). The authors concluded that most cases of MI in post-menopausal women could be prevented by consuming a healthy diet and moderate amounts of alcohol, being physically active, refraining from smoking, and maintaining a low level of abdominal fat. They also found that the combined benefits of diet, lifestyle, and low levels of abdominal fat could prevent more than three out of four cases of MI in this sample of post-menopausal women. Unfortunately, this combination of healthy behaviours was found in only 5% of the post-menopausal women studied. These results stress the importance of developing strategies to improve the lifestyle habits of post-menopausal women, which should theoretically have a major impact on the MI risk of that population.
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