Lifestyle changes can make big difference to heart disease deaths

A similarly modest cut in blood pressure levels could prevent another 8,000 heart disease deaths, predicts Simon Capewell, a professor of clinical epidemiology at Liverpool University.

His recommendations were made in a briefing paper to the UK's Health Development Agency, set up to advise on 'what works' in public health.

The paper stresses the benefits to be gained from simple lifestyle changes like lowering cholesterol, which can be effectively addressed through dietary changes such as consuming functional foods.

There is also increasing evidence to support the impact of certain foods on healthy blood pressure, with increasing development of dairy-based products that act on reducing raised blood pressure.

The paper also recommended that reducing the UK population's smoking rates from the current 27 per cent, to the American level of 22 per cent, would save a further 17,000 lives annually.

The combined effects of these adjustments could rapidly prevent 50,000 deaths every year, slashing the current annual coronary heart disease death rate of 100,000, said Capewell.

"A reduction in smoking, cholesterol and blood pressure will result in fewer deaths within 12 to 24 months,"​ he predicted.

Lifestyle changes are already responsible for a significant drop in mortality rates in the industrialised world over the last two decades, Professor Capewell said.

In England and Wales there were 68,000 fewer heart disease deaths in 2000 compared with 1981. Professor Capewell said about 58 per cent of this decline can be attributed to improvements in these risk factors.