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• Posted April 25, 2025

These Three Bad Habits Can Harm Your Health As Young As Your Mid-30s

Bad habits like smoking, heavy drinking and skipping exercise can start to impact a person’s health as early as their mid-30s, a new study says.

In fact, those three specific vices mean poorer physical and mental health starting at age 36, researchers report today in the Annals of Medicine.

“Our findings highlight the importance of tackling risky health behaviors, such as smoking, heavy drinking and physical inactivity, as early as possible to prevent the damage they do to from building up over the years, culminating in poor mental and physical health later in later life,” lead researcher Tiia Kekäläinen, a health scientist with the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers tracked the health of more than 300 children born in Jyväskylä, Finland in 1959, performing regular updates on their mental and physical health through age 61.

As part of the research, doctors assessed at each update whether a person smoked, engaged in heavy drinking or exercised less than once a week.

Results revealed that people with all three of those unhealthy habits had a greater risk of depression and health problems.

Crucially, these effects were apparent by the time  participants were in their mid-30s, researchers said.

Lack of exercise was tied to poor physical health, smoking with poor mental health, and heavy drinking with both poor physical and mental health, researchers wrote.

“Diseases such as heart disease and cancer cause almost three-quarters of deaths worldwide,” Kekäläinen said. “But by following a healthy lifestyle, an individual can cut their risk of developing these illnesses and reduce their odds of an early death.”

However, “it is never too late to change to healthier habits," she emphasized.

“Adopting healthier habits in midlife also has benefits for older age,” Kekäläinen said.

The researchers noted that because this was an observational study, it can’t draw a direct cause-and-effect link between these habits and health problems.

The relationship between habits and health also is likely two way, researchers added. For example, someone who is stressed might drink heavily to help them cope, and their drinking then can lead to poorer well-being.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on healthy lifestyle.

SOURCE: University of Jyväskylä, news release, April 25, 2025