For those of you with new resolutions, a sobering study from JAMA shows how difficult it is to change bad habits, even after a heart attack or a stroke.

From Sanjay Gupta’s twitter feed, link and excerpt: Video (1:48) http://ow.ly/sdS7R 

Even a brush with death is often not enough to get us to make better choices. Researchers studied more than 150,000 people from all around the world, rich and poor, urban and rural. Participants answered questions about exercise, diet, and smoking.

Because the group was so large, there were almost 8,000 participants who had survived either a heart attack or a stroke. The health habits of this group were startling. Only 39 percent reported improving their diet, and just 35 percent increased their physical activity. Of those who were smokers, only 52 percent quit. Just 4 percent of those 8,000 people improved their habits in all three areas: smoking, diet, and exercise.