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Do you know what smoking, heart disease, tobacco use, stroke, and drug abuse all have in common? All of these things are lifestyle diseases. Lifestyle diseases are diseases which are caused by the way a person lives. This means that if you get a lifestyle disease, the reason you got it is because of the way you live. For example, if you have heart disease, this might have been caused because you did not have a healthy diet and did not get an appropriate amount of physical exercise. If you do not get a lifestyle disease, it is also because of the way you live.
For example if you did not get heart disease, it is most likely because you got an appropriate amount of physical exercise, and had a good diet. Poor health choices such as not getting enough physical exercise, eating too many unhealthy foods, smoking, and drug abuse can all lead to lifestyle diseases. Making good health choices such as getting an appropriate amount of physical exercise, having a balanced diet, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, and not abusing drugs can help prevent lifestyle diseases. Lifestyle diseases are not acute (if you have it, it will go away), they are chronic (it stays with you).
What makes this so important is if you make a bad decision and get a lifestyle disease, it can stay with you and affect you for the rest of your life. This is why it is important to make good and healthy decisions now instead of just putting it off and saying that you will do it tomorrow. If you have a lifestyle disease it may limit what you can do. For example, if you smoke it hurts your lungs which can make you not be able to breathe as well as you normally do, so if you play sports it can hurt how well you play.
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Smoking is also a cumulative risk which means the more you take this risk, the more the risk hurts your health. Another example of how a lifestyle disease can affect you is if you have a stroke, sometimes you can’t move certain parts of your body and you have to stay in bed. Also lifestyle diseases can seriously hurt your health, for example strokes can kill you. Even if the lifestyle disease does not kill you directly, it can lead to your death. For example, if you are intoxicated and then start driving you are more likely to have an accident that could lead to your or someone else’s death and you or someone else getting seriously hurt.
Even if there is no accident, if you are driving while intoxicated, you could get in a lot of trouble, you could get your license taken away, get your vehicle taken away, have to pay a fine, and/or get imprisoned. Some lifestyle diseases such as tobacco use and drug abuse are cumulative risks. If have taken a cumulative risk, to avoid making the risk worse, you have to practice abstinence. Abstinence is avoiding taking a risk. For example, if you smoke, abstinence in this case would be to stop smoking. Abstinence will avoid increasing the risk.
With some lifestyle diseases, if you try to do your best to stay healthy, it can help to increase how long you live. For example, if you have heart disease, if you get an appropriate amount of physical exercise and have a balanced diet, you will probably have a longer life than someone who does not get an appropriate amount of physical exercise and does not have a balanced diet. Also if you mix different lifestyle diseases, your health will be worse. For example a person who has heart disease will be healthier than a person who has heart disease, smokes, abuse drugs, and uses tobacco.
To avoid getting a lifestyle disease, there are certain lifestyle factors that can help keep you from getting a lifestyle disease. Lifestyle factors are the habits related to the way a person lives. One way a lifestyle factor can help prevent you from getting a lifestyle disease is if you ride a bike or walk to work or school instead of driving. This will help prevent a lifestyle disease because it is physical activity and physical activity can help prevent heart disease. Some good lifestyle factors are abstaining from drugs, exercising regularly, and getting enough sleep.
Some bad lifestyle factors are not getting enough sleep, not getting enough exercise, and not abstaining from drugs. Making seemingly insignificant lifestyle factors can have a big influence on your health, for example walking instead of driving every day to work can help you be healthier while eating a candy bar for a snack instead of something healthy like an apple everyday can have a bad influence on your health. Over time these little choices add up for better or worse. So be careful with your health you can not always undo a bad choice you made when it comes to your health.
Sources
- https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=38316
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862441/
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/transcripts/1444_lifestyle-choices-root-causes-of-chronic-diseases
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11795/
