Thirty-five years ago 2,500 men in Caerphilly.
Abertridwr, Bedwas, Machen, Senghenydd and Trethomas in Wales agreed to help in a long term study of health. This booklet is based upon both what we learnt with these men about health and wellbeing, and what has been discovered in other published medical studies from other countries and other communities.
The Caerphilly study was based on men simply because resources were limited. Heart disease was the most important disease to be researched when it was set up, and heart disease was, and still is very much more common amongst men. Other work has shown that almost all we say in what follows applies equally to men and women
