Can you stand just a little more evidence that healthy lifestyle choices do, in fact, help avoid serious health problems. Eat right and get plenty of sleep!! We’ve discussed several times how sleep, or lack of, can impact physical and mental health.

Now a large study shows that a diet that was originally concocted for people with high blood pressure has a fairly dramatic impact on the incidence of heart attacks and stroke.

This being political campaign season, I was struck with the difference between a medical study and a poll. With a political poll they might find out what a few thousand people are thinking over a few hour’s time. In this case the study involved 88,000 people followed over a 24 year period. This paragraph really didn’t have anything to do with anything other than I thought it was kind of interesting.

Anyway, a significant study for sure. The diet was no surprise emphasizing a lot of fruit and vegetables and protein sources that don’t all involve meat. The comparison was between those who followed the diet and those who ate “typical American diets”. Those on the high blood pressure diet were 24% less likely to have a heart attack and 18% less likely to have a stroke.

While life insurance can be attained in most cases following a heart attack or stroke, there is no doubt that, compared with the price of someone who hasn’t had one of those occurrences, there is a high likelihood of sticker shock.

Bottom line. Lifestyle choices happen every day and what we do with those very often determines how many days we get. We not only get to live longer, but we get to pay less for life insurance while we are here.