Lifestyle: Lifestyle is the typical way of life of an individual, group or culture. Lifestyle includes daily life behaviors and functions of individuals in the workplace, activities, fun, diet and households. Lifestyle is formed in specific geographical, economic, political, cultural and religious text.
Lifestyle is made up of motivations, needs and wants and is influenced by culture, family, reference groups and social class.
Modern Lifestyle: Modern lifestyle is totally different from old lifestyle in attitude, life rhythm and physical condition. Technology involvement is very high in today’s lifestyle. People are more familiar with technological gadgets nowadays. Technology provides comfort and reduces physical activity of people and also reduces time of work.
Correlation Between Modern Lifestyle and Health
Essential factor of health is lifestyle. Healthy lifestyle like a proper diet, proper physical fitness and a healthy weight can provide positive health. Unhealthy lifestyle behavior may raise health related issues like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic diseases and other chronic diseases. Lifestyle can affect our physical, psychological and social health. Hence, it is very important to understand the relationship and maintain the right balance between modern lifestyle and health.
Various Modern Lifestyle Habits That Influence Health
Diet and Body Mass Index (BMI): Diet is the most important factor in lifestyle and is directly related with positive health. People’s eating behaviour has changed from before. Earlier, the people took a diet which included a lot of vegetables and fruits thus, they were able to take high nutrition content.
But, as the lifestyle changes, the diet has also changed. In a competitive world, the diet has also become fast and people don’t have time to cook meals. So, people start preferring to eat fast-foods which have low nutritious value. Low nutritious value diet is responsible for various diseases like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. This problem is very common in urban societies. According to the study of NHFS, obesity cases are increasing with the higher rate in India in past years. BMI (Body Mass Index) can be used to measure unhealthy lifestyle.
Lack of Physical Fitness Or Exercise: Another problem in modern lifestyle is lack of physical fitness. Exercise has a direct relation with positive health. Unhealthy diet and lack of physical fitness both together can damage a person’s health. The main reason for lack of physical fitness in modern lifestyle is technology because it leads to increased sedentary lifestyle and more sitting activities. Continuous exercise and a healthy diet both together can increase health.
Lack of Sleep: Sleep influences mental and physical health. Modern lifestyle aspects like TV, computer screens, longer travelling and the blurring of line between personal time and work time are the major reasons for sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation leads to weakening the body immune system and prevents the production of cytokines to fight infection. Lack of sleep also causes obesity and cardiovascular diseases. Minimum seven hours of good sleep is required for a healthy lifestyle.
Substance: Addiction is an unhealthy lifestyle. Addiction of smoking, alcohol and other carcinogenic substances has a pursuit of pleasure in modern lifestyle. These substances result in various problems like depression, anxiety, asthma, cancer and brain injury. According to a study, 30% of people smoke cigarettes permanently between 18-65 years of age.
Technology Addiction: Technology is the most important part of modern lifestyle. Technology has certain advantages to people and makes things better like fast communication and ease of travelling. Technology in modern lifestyle reduces physical work but also makes it dependent on it. The Internet is a basic requirement for every household nowadays. No doubt, technology provides comfort to us. But the problem arises when it becomes an addiction.
Medication: Various issues related to medication use are self-treatment, sharing medication, medication using without prescription, high dose of drug, unnecessary medications, low attention to contradictory drugs and disregard of harmful effects of drugs. All these problems affect human health in a negative manner.
Recreation: Leisure time is a sub-factor related to lifestyle. Disorganized planning and unhealthy leisure affect the health in a negative manner. Leisure time should be used for enjoyment purposes.
Study: Study is also a factor which may lead to more physical and mental health. For example, Alzheimer’s and Dementia disease chances are lower in educated people.
Conclusion:
Modern lifestyle has a great involvement of technology which leads to sedentary behavior of people. Technology has a positive impact in individual life like providing comfort, reducing physical activity and making convenience to life.
Various modern lifestyle habits that influence health are diet, BMI, lack of sleep, lack of physical exercise etc. Health problems are also associated with modern lifestyle like cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart diseases, gastrointestinal diseases etc.
An optimum balance between lifestyle and health is required. Healthy lifestyle can be achieved using a healthy diet, proper exercise or physical body activity.
Clinicians and physicians also have their role to change the behavior of the public with respect to health.
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