According to researchers a healthy lifestyle can lower the risks of heart failure in men by half and of high blood pressure in women by 80%.

In the study 20,900 men who participated in the Physician's Health Study from 1982 to 2008 who were healthy at the start of the study were followed. 1,200 new cases of heart failure were diagnosed during the duration of the study.

The researchers said lower heart failure risks were seen when six healthy lifestyle factors were incorporated. These were maintaining normal body weight, never smoking, regular exercise, moderate alcohol use, a diet that included eating breakfast cereals regularly and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.

The study found that the more of the six healthy lifestyle factors men incorporated in their lives the lower was their risk of heart failure. "For example, the lifetime risk for heart failure was approximately 1 in 5 (21.2%) in men adhering to none of the desirable lifestyle factors, compared to 1 in 10 (10.1%) in those adhering to four or more healthy lifestyle factors," said Luc Djousse, MD, ScD, MPH, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and colleagues.

The study was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Another study on similar lines was undertaken on women and more than 80,000 women, 27 to 44 years old, who participated in the second Nurses Health Study from 1991 to 2005, were followed. All of the women had normal blood pressure levels and were free of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer at the start of the study.

During the 14-year follow up, 12,319 cases of high blood pressure in the women were reported. High blood pressure contributes to more excess deaths in women than any other preventable factor.

In this study too researchers found the following six healthy lifestyle factors were associated with a lower risk of developing high blood pressure.

These were: maintaining healthy weight of body mass index (BMI) of less than 25, daily exercise of an average of 30 minutes of vigorous exercise, consuming a heart- healthy diet which involved following the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet based on high intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, low-fat dairy products, and whole grains, and low intake of sodium, sweetened beverages, and red and processed meats.

Moderate alcohol use, and controlled use of non-narcotic pain relievers at less than once per week and taking a folic acid supplement of 400 micrograms.

The researchers found that women with all six of these healthy lifestyle factors (0.3% of the women in the study), had an 80% lower risk of developing high blood pressure, regardless of family history of hypertension.

They also found that among the healthy lifestyle factors, BMI was the most powerful predictor of high blood pressure risk. Researchers estimated that 40% of new hypertension cases could be prevented if all women had a BMI under 25.

"Adherence to a combination of low-risk lifestyle factors could have the potential to prevent the majority of new-onset hypertension in young women irrespective of family history of hypertension and irrespective of oral contraceptive use," said researcher John Forman, MD, MSc, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

"[This] conclusion is particularly poignant given that some women may mistakenly believe that their parental history signifies that their own development of hypertension may be unavoidable; rather, these women may conceivably at least delay onset of hypertension by reducing their risk factors."