Study reaffirms healthy lifestyle can prevent depression

BEIJING: Maintaining a healthy lifestyle has long been associated with physical well-being, and recent research has affirmed that this also applies to mental health.

Seven healthy lifestyle factors, which include, moderate alcohol consumption, healthy diet, regular physical activity, adequate sleep, abstaining from smoking, limited sedentary behaviour and frequent social connections, are linked with a lower risk of depression, according to the findings of the research recently published in the journal Nature Mental Health.

It was jointly conducted by an international team of researchers from multiple institutes including China's Fudan University and the University of Cambridge in Britain.

The team identified the seven healthy lifestyle factors by analysing data collected from nearly 290,000 individuals from the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource, Xinhua reported.

According to the research findings, among the seven factors, getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night has the most significant impact, lowering the risk of depression by 22 per cent. It is closely followed by abstaining from smoking, which reduces the risk by 20 per cent; maintaining frequent social connections reduces the risk by 18 per cent, engaging in regular physical activity by 14 per cent, limiting sedentary behaviour to low-to-moderate levels by 13 per cent, moderate alcohol consumption by 11 per cent, and adopting a healthy diet by six per cent.

The research also noted that the brain structure, immunometabolic and genetic mechanisms might explain the link between lifestyle and depression.

"Together, our findings suggest that adherence to a healthy lifestyle could aid in the prevention of depression," the study stated.

--BERNAMA-XINHUA