Researchers point to diet and lifestyle as a way we can avoid premature death and disability in Canada

Samiah Alam & Dr. Leah Cahill

A national initiative led by researchers at the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) and Dalhousie University studied the burden of diseases and injuries attributable to risk factors in Canada and their paper was recently published in CMAJ Open. 

Nutrition researchers Dr. Leah Cahill(1) and Samiah Alam set out to quantify the determinants of healthy life expectancy in Canada from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study (GBD). The GBD study is "an international scientific effort to systematically quantify the comparative magnitude of global health loss resulting from disease, injuries and risk factors to inform evidence-based policy-making." While burden estimates have been presented for individual countries such as the United States, Germany and the UK to help with national policies and prioritizing, Canada had not yet been summarized. 

The top 3 risk factors identified in Canada from the study were (1) tobacco, (2) diet and (3) high body mass index, followed by (4) high fasting plasma glucose, (5) high systolic blood pressure, (6) alcohol and drug use, (7) occupational risks, (8) high total cholesterol, (9) impaired kidney function and (10) air pollution. Cahill hopes the study will inform national health policy by prioritizing these risk factors in Canada. "An understanding of Canada’s foremost health problems, their risk factors, and how both are changing over time is crucial to inform national health policy and programs, health authority planning and scientific research priorities...actionable preventive strategies can lead to improved health outcomes." 

Cahill used three well-established metrics to summarize health loss including
disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), total deaths and years lived with disability . "One DALY is equivalent to 1 year of healthy life (free of disease, injury or disability) lost. Because DALYs quantify both mortality and morbidity, total DALYs are considered to represent the burden of diseases and injuries for a country, indicating the gap between the country’s current health status and an ideal health situation in which the country’s entire population lives to an advanced age, free of disease and disability." 

The trend for Canada from 1990 to 2016 hasn't changed at the top. Tobacco exposure has continued to be the leading risk factor followed by diet, but high BMI and high fasting plasma glucose have both increased, beating out high blood pressure and high cholesterol both of which dropped in rankings over time. 

The good news is that factors proving to be the highest risk, tobacco and diet, are modifiable- change your ways, lower your own risks and reduce Canada's health burden.




1- Leah Cahill, PhD, Affiliated Scientist, QEII Health Sciences Centre, Nova Scotia Health Authority, Howard Webster Department of Medicine Research Chair and Assistant Professor, Dalhousie University, Visiting Scientist, Department of Nutrition, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health