Med. diet, exercise, normal weight and not smoking reduce heart risk Med. diet, exercise, normal weight and not smoking reduce heart risk. This handout image provided by the United States Agriculture Department (USDA) released on June 2, 2011 shows the USDA's new healthy eating symbol, My Plate. The USDA replaced the nearly 20 year old Food Pyramid with My Plate in an attempt to simply healthy eating guidelines. BALTIMORE, June 3 (UPI) -- Four lifestyle changes -- Mediterranean diet, exercise, normal weight and not smoking -- help prevent heart disease, U.S. researchers say. Dr. Haitham Ahmed, an internal medicine resident with the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues found adopting the four lifestyle behaviors protect against coronary heart disease as well as the early buildup of calcium deposits in heart arteries. They found the changes reduce the chance of death from all causes by 80 percent over an eight-year period. "To our knowledge, this is the first study to find a protective association between low-risk lifestyle factors and early signs of vascular disease, coronary heart disease and death, in a single longitudinal evaluation," Ahmed, the lead author, said in a statement. We evaluated data on more than 6,200 men and women, ages 44-84, from white, African-American, Hispanic and Chinese backgrounds. All were followed for an average of 7.6 years. Those who adopted all four healthy behaviors had an 80 percent lower death rate over that time period compared to participants with none of the healthy behaviors. The study participants took part in the ongoing Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a prospective examination of the risk factors, prevalence and prevention of cardiovascular disease. The findings were published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.