What are lifestyle diseases?
Lifestyle diseases characterize those diseases whose occurrence is primarily based on the daily habits of people and are a result of an inappropriate relationship of people with their environment.
Cancer
Diabetes
Heart Disease and Strock
Chronic Lung Diseases
Other NCDs
Physical inactivity
Unhealthy Diets
Smoking
In the present modern era of urbanization and industrialization due to sedentary life style, changed personal habits, unhealthy diet, lifestyle diseases has become the most common cause of death.
These diseases include hypertension, heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, obesity, anxiety depression, osteoporosis, alzheimers disease, diseases associated with smoking and alcohol and drug abuse, cancer, chronic bronchitis, premature mortality etc.
At present, cardiovascular disease has become the single largest cause of death worldwide, about 30% of all deaths and 14% of DALYs.
Heart disease prevalence in urban population has increased from 3% (1960) to 15 % at present.
In India, around 20-30% percent of adults suffer from hypertension while the country is home to 1-2 crores diabetics (5-10% in rural areas and 18-20 % in urban areas develop diabetes).
Three out of every 1,000 people suffer a stroke.
Obesity is a serious public health concern and contributes to 30 crore deaths worldwide every year.
Among children aged 6 through 19 yr in 31.0 per centr are overweight and16.0 percent were obese.
And among adults more than 20 year old 65% are overweight and 35% are obese.
About 90% cases of diabetes mellitus type 2 are directly related to obesity.
Causes of lifestyle disease
Common causes include bad diet options, lack of adequate exercise, poor posture, disruption in biological clock, poor lifestyle choices, environmental conditions occupational lifestyle diseases, work environments, stress etc.
Specifically, the factors contributing to lifestyle diseases of the present day are mostly of occupational in nature.
Today's job is highly demanding which makes us working for long hours with lots of responsibilities and stress.
Peoples are too busy to get a balanced, home cooked food, and instead fast foods and food in restaurants with heavy dietary fats become the substitute.
There is an old saying, "We are what we eat" which holds good even today. This unbalanced diet contributes to elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.
Worldwide, high cholesterol levels cause some 56% of ischemic heart disease and 18% of strokes, amounting to 4.4 million deaths annually.
1.9 million deaths are attributable to physical inactivity. At least 60% of the general population does not achieve the minimum recommendation of 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity daily.
People who are physically inactive have twice the risk of heart attack and stroke independent of BMI. Physical inactivity further increases risk of obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis.
Current guidelines call for moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes, 5 or more days a week, or vigorous exercise for 20 minutes, 3 days a week.
The shift from physically demanding, agriculture-based work to largely sedentary service industry and office-based work is occurring throughout the developing world while adolescents spending more time on internet, video games, television.
Over 1.3 billion people worldwide use tobacco; more than 1 billion smoke and the rest use oral or nasal tobacco.
In our country more than 50% of population between age of 12 to 60 years smoke. Adolescent is the most vulnerable phase for smoking addiction.
With observing father's and friend's smoking habit, he once tries as experiment and it becomes habit and parents are too busy to give proper attention to kids.
Approximately 20% of adolescents smoke. In adults work stress is the most important determinant for smoking. In a study it was concluded that those who work for long hours are more prone to smoking.
Approximately 40% of cigarette smokers will die prematurely due to cigarette smoking unless they are able to quit. Approximately 90% of peripheral vascular disease in the non-diabetic population can be attributed to cigarette smoking, as can -50% of aortic aneurysms, 30% of heart disease, and 10% of stroke.
Smoking increases risk for hypertension, dyslipidemia, early atherosclerosis which further increases risk of cardiovascular disease. Globally, smoking-related CHD deaths totaled approximately 890,000, compared with 420,000 smoking-related cerebrovascular deaths.
Other forms of tobacco use beyond cigarette smoking also increase the risk for CHD. Bidis, hookah, smokeless tobacco and even second hand smoking are all linked to an increased risk for CHD.
Tobacco smoking can causes any type of cancer. Within 1-2 years of beginning to smoke regularly, many young smokers will develop inflammatory changes in their small airways, and cigarette smoking is responsible for 90% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Both depression and mental stress predispose to increased cardiovascular risk. The adrenergic stimulation of mental stress can augment oxygen requirements of heart and aggravate myocardial ischemia.
Mental stress can cause coronary vasoconstriction, particularly in atherosclerotic coronary arteries, and hence can influence oxygen supply of the heart as well. More recently, work related stress has gained recognition as a source of vascular risk.
Work stress has two components-job strain, which combines high work demands and low job control, and effort-reward imbalance, which more closely reflects economic factors in the workplace.
Both components are associated with an approximate doubling of risk for heart attack and stroke. Other psychological metrics, including anger and hostility scales, have also been associated with elevated vascular risk.
In the INTERHEART study evaluating post heart attack patients from 52 countries, psychosocial stress was associated with vascular risk, with a magnitude of effect similar to that of the major risk factors.
Those with depression have a significantly higher risk of developing heart disease during follow-up. depression is also associated with an increased prevalence of hypertension, smoking, and lack of physical activity, the effects of depression on overall risk remain after adjusting for these and other traditional risk factors.
In the present modern life style, we do not take care of our health and the consequences of our eating habits and other styles of life.
Only when we land into trouble we realize the bad state of affairs being the side effects of the modern life style. And by the time we realize its too late to reverse the effects.
The fast paced life style is creating dangerous disorders on our health and we begin to feel it only above the age of 40. Nowadays even at the age of 30 the symptoms of problems are felt.
Physical inactivity and unhealthy food habits are very common in children. have life long impact on the lifestyle diseases. These leads to early beginning of atherosclerotic process.
Overweight and obesity leads to insulin resistance and increased risk of developing diabetes at an early age.
Most of these diseases can be prevented only by ourself efforts. With regular exercise, healthy diet and avoiding smoking & alcohol we can prevent 50 % of hospital visits.
Here is the brief information about these various lifestyle diseases, risk factors, symptoms and remedies.