LAUSR

I n the current issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 4 separate articles address the impact of functional capacity and lifestyle characteristics on health outcomes and associated costs. These articles highlight the importance of promoting healthy living (HL) behaviors across the life span. People who lead an unhealthy lifestyle are at high risk for the occurrence of bad and expensive health-related phenomena, particularly those related to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The bad is related to multimorbidity, frequent physician visits, pharmacologic dependency (eg, drugs to treat hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes mellitus), surgical procedures, and premature mortality. The expensive piece of this equation is related to the dramatically high (and steadily increasing) health care costs associated with treating these morbid complications. Suffice it to say, it is imperative to promote HL characteristics irrespective of age, sex, race/ethnicity, and baseline health status. Moreover, migration from unhealthy behaviors to 1 or more HL characteristics has the potential for significant health and economic benefits (ie, fewer bad, expensive health-related phenomena). Compared with those individuals with the most unhealthy lifestyles, those with an ideal lifestyledthat is, primarily related to being physically active, consuming a nutritious and healthy diet, not smoking, and maintaining a healthy body weightdhave up to an approximately 80% lower risk of bad and expensive things happening to their health (ie, diagnosis of a chronic disease and associated adverse health consequences). In fact, there is no other pharmacologic cocktail or surgical procedure that can tout such risk reductions. The American Heart Association has proposed a metric to define poor, intermediate, and ideal cardiovascular health (iCVH) named Life’s Simple 7 (LS7), and its framework consists of 4 health behaviors (physical activity