The number of Americans that adhere to a healthy lifestyle has plummeted 46% in the last 20 years, according to scientists at the Medical University of South Carolina. 

Just 8% of adults between the ages of 40-74 practice all 5 of the following behaviors: exercising, eating fruits and vegetables, maintaining a healthy weight, drinking alcohol in moderation and not smoking.

That number was 15% in 1988, according to Dana King and colleagues, who published the distressing findings in the American Journal of Medicine.

“These findings should provide new motivation for an increasing commitment to promoting healthy lifestyles for the public good,” the researchers told MedPageToday.

To reach their conclusions, the scientists pulled data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which uses self-reported data on such behavior.

Over the 18 year study period, the percentage of adults classified as obese, which is to say having a BMI of 30 or above, rose from 28% to 36%.

The proportion adults that exercised at least 12 times per month dropped from 53% to 43% while those eating 5 daily servings of fruits and vegetables dropped from a hard-to-believe 42% to 26%.

Smoking rates remained at 26.5%.

Non-Hispanic whites exhibited the steepest declines in overall healthy behaviors, and those with cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and diabetes were not more likely than others to adhere to recommendations for a healthy lifestyle.

The scientists suggested that increased reliance on cars as well as changes in attitudes about the importance of diet and exercise might be driving the numbers.

Health care costs will surely continue upward and hard-earned gains in longevity will be reversed ”if middle-aged adults do not increasingly adopt a healthy lifestyle as the primary approach to prevention and treatment of hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia,” they warned.

There once was a time when college students asked classmates or TAs for help when it came time to prepare for exams.

Now it seems, these tried and true resources have been replaced by Web sites which offer answers to textbook problems, copies of old exams, lecture notes, and on-line help from paid experts among other things.

“Many professors won’t tell you how you got (something) wrong — just that it’s wrong. This way you complete the feedback process, which is essential to learning,” Columbia sophomore Chris O’Connor explained to the New York Times.

On Course Hero for example, students can access 3 million student-submitted items from 400,000 courses at more than 3,500 schools, including study guides, lecture notes, lab results, presentations, essays, research papers, and homework assignments.

Those who submit the goods can navigate Course Hero for free. Everyone else forks over a monthly fee. The site has several hundred thousand users.

On Cramster, 500,000 visitors have sought answers to science and math textbook problems. Answers to odd-numbered problems are free, but for those particularly tricky even-numbered problems, students must pay $9.95 per month.

Advocates for the Web sites, which include some professors, argue that many documents housed on the sites have been accessible to fraternity and sorority members since Animal House.

David Sachs, an associate dean at Pace University who has joined Cramster’s advisory panel, argues that “if Cramster and all these companies disappeared tomorrow, you could still do a Google search and find what you’re looking for in 5 minutes.”

And William Kinney, a Physics professor at SUNY Buffalo believes the system is “self-policing.” “If the students just copy down answers to the homework, they will not do well on the exam,” he told the Times.