If you do one thing this week. . . know the basic healthy behaviours

Readers of this supplement may delight or despair at reports about how specific actions may be linked to a lower risk of certain ailments.

But taking a broader sweep, a paper published online in the American Journal of Public Healthlooked at data from almost 17,000 people in a major US study and analysed four basic lifestyle behaviours that could contribute to a longer and healthier life.

No prizes for guessing them: limit alcohol use, don’t smoke, eat healthily and engage in adequate physical activity.

An article on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website dishes the stats from the CDC study, noting that people who engaged in all four of these behaviours were 65 per cent less likely to die early from cardiovascular disease, 66 per cent less likely to die early from cancer and 57 per cent less likely to die early from other causes compared with people who did not engage in any of them.

See cdc.gov/Features/LiveLonger/