Combination of Risk Factors

The problem with most studies is that they pull out one intervention, such as sedentary time, and try and control for every other lifestyle factor, and come up with how it can affect mortality risk. In the real world people may do many unhealthy activities and many healthy activities in various combinations. An Australian study published on PLOS/Medicine attempted to assess multiple risk factors involving 231,048 participants over the age of 45 over a 6 year period in relationship to mortality. The participants were given questionnaires and evaluated on 6 health behaviors: smoking, alcohol use, dietary behavior, physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. This gave the researchers a possible 96 combinations. they found some combinations were more harmful than others. The worst were combinations of physical inactivity, sedentary behavior, and/or long sleep duration and combinations involving smoking and high alcohol consumption.