Last week's article made a claim that may have struck you as a bit too obvious: that good health or bad health, for that matter just doesn't happen. Good health or bad health accrues from the sum of your lifestyle, exercise, and dietary habits. To use bookkeeping terms, think of your overall health as the final figure on a ledger; your individual actions, the credits and debits.

Wake up early, do the elliptical for 45 minutes on an empty stomach to burn some of that unwanted body fat you've been trying to shed. Three credits.But watch everyone at work scarf down a doughnut during your coffee break, break down and eat one too. Two, maybe two and a half, debits.It's a simple concept, right? But could you see yourself carving out time during each day to keep such a count? Luckily for you, a smidgen of information and a sack full of common sense is an effective substitute.A number of aggregate studies in the past have established that some basic precepts of health and fitness not only increase lifespan, but also improve the quality of life during those "extra" years. Proper diet, sufficient sleep, regular exercise, and avoidance of smoking four common but crucial elements of a healthy lifestyle are the four factors most often cited in these studies.Furthermore, studies that prove the benefits of adhering to just one of the four abound.In March, research presented at the American Heart EPI/Lifestyle 2015 meeting showed that eating more plant-based foods and less animal-based foods lowered the risk of heart disease. Camille Lassale, Ph.D, lead author and an epidemiologist at Imperial College London's School of Public Health reported that to be the case from an observational study analyzing the habits of nearly half a million Europeans for 12 years.Like the business-ledger analogy used in the intro, researchers added points for plant-based foods consumed and subtracted them for animal-based foods. These calculations determined that the subjects who consumed approximately 70 percent of their calories from plant sources had a 20 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease than those who consumed more than 45 percent of their calories from animal sources.In a media release, Lassale said, "Instead of drastic avoidance of animal-based foods, substituting some of the meat in your diet with plant-based food may be a very simple, useful way to lower cardiovascular mortality."In January, a report published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reported that adhering to a plant-based diet led to weight loss even if the dieters didn't count calories or work out. The review of 15 prior studies half that did not have weight loss as a concern! found that those who adhered to a vegetarian or vegan diet for one month lost on the average 7.48 pounds and that those who remained on the diet lost more than 10 pounds total.Also this March, the journal Neurology published a report that linked the length of sleep to the incidence of strokes. Using data already retrieved by the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer, researchers at the University of Cambridge learned that older adults who slept less than six hours a night were 18 percent more likely to sustain a stroke in the next 10 years, but that those who overslept got more than eight hours were 46 percent more likely when compared to a group that slept between six and eight hours a night.Education, smoking and drinking habits, body mass index, blood pressure, and family history of stroke were considered in this study and factored out of the aforementioned percentages.Another March release, this time by BMC Medicine, reinforced the obvious: smoking cigarettes really hurts your health. In a study of over 200,000 people, Australian National University researchers found that two out of every three smokers died from some sort of smoking-related illness.Those who smoked 10 cigarettes per day doubled their risk of death; those who smoked a pack a day quadrupled it. Tobacco smoke itself was found to increase the risk for no less than 13 types of cancer.Surprisingly enough, studies have found a lack of exercise to be nearly as detrimental to your health as cigarette smoking. One of the most recent ones, published in The Lancet in July of 2012, determined that if you're not doing at least two and a half hours of moderate exercise each week expending the energy required for a sustained, moderately paced walk you are increasing your odds of dying from heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon, and breast cancer by up to 10 percent.A 2013 study published in the British Medical Journal declared that for many types of illnesses, exercise rather than drugs should be the course of treatment or at least included in the course of treatment.