A new research has suggested that poor habits that take a toll on health are also costing Canadians an average of six fewer years of life.

Smoking, excess alcohol use, lack of physical activity and unhealthy diet were the likely causes for about 50% of Canadian deaths, the study researchers said. They also pointed out that the reverse was true for those following the healthiest lifestyles as such people lived nearly 18 years longer than those with the poorest health-related lifestyles.

The researchers reviewed national data and developed a new algorithm to help better understand the ills associated with unhealthy behavior.

It was found that about 26% of all Canadian deaths are caused by smoking, 24% by inactivity, 12% by poor diet and 0.4% by alcohol.

In the study, the researchers used newly developed methods to mine a massive amount of data from the Canadian Community Health Survey to determine just how quickly our bad habits are killing us.

"Unhealthy behaviors place a major burden on Canadian life expectancies," said lead author Dr. Doug Manuel, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, said in a hospital news release.
"This study identified which behaviors pose the biggest threat. Our [algorithm] is a new way of measuring the impact of health problems on life expectancy," Manuel said. "In an era of big data, we should be moving beyond the old methods that have remained largely unchanged for the past 60 years”, said Dr. Manuel.

The researchers found that smoking was the top risk factor for men and was linked with a loss of over three years of life. The top risk factor for women was inactivity, linked with a loss of three years of life, the study said. But the study failed to provide any cause-and-effect link between lifestyle and longevity.

According to a report in CTV NEWS by Eric Longley, "A new Canadian study is giving us a much better idea. Using newly-developed methods to mine a massive amount of data from the Canadian Community Health Survey, researchers have been able to determine just how quickly our bad habits are killing us."

And that's just the average. When the study compares Canadians who followed recommended healthy behaviours with those with the unhealthiest behaviours, the difference in life expectancy was a whopping 17.9 years.

Smoking is still the single biggest risk factor, but leading a sedentary lifestyle is now a very close second. The study found that 26% of all deaths are attributable to smoking vs. 24% to physical inactivity and 12% to poor diet. 0.4% of all deaths are attributable to unhealthy alcohol consumption.

A report published in UPI informed, "Poor habits that take a toll on health are also costing Canadians an average of six fewer years of life, new research suggests. And the researchers contended the reverse was true -- folks with the healthiest lifestyles lived nearly 18 years longer than those with the poorest health-related lifestyles."

Smoking was the top risk factor for men. It was linked with a loss of just over three years of life. The top risk factor for women was inactivity, linked with a loss of three years of life, the study said. But the study did not prove a cause-and-effect link between lifestyle and longevity.

"Our [algorithm] is a new way of measuring the impact of health problems on life expectancy," Manuel said. "In an era of big data, we should be moving beyond the old methods that have remained largely unchanged for the past 60 years."