The Channing Division of Network Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital seeks to understand how different lifestyle factors affect health. Lifestyle factors, including diet, physical activity, and sleep, influence a range of health outcomes and contribute to wide health disparities. These factors can contribute to or exacerbate health problems and reduce life expectancy. While some of these factors can be directly changed, others are primarily influenced by biological factors.
Various lifestyle factors can increase risk of developing certain diseases, including cancer. Several of these risk factors are related to the increasing incidence of noncommunicable diseases around the world. According to FATMA AL-MASKARI, Associate Professor at United Arab Emirates University, unhealthy diets, smoking and physical inactivity are all associated with an increased risk of certain chronic diseases. Among these factors are obesity and overweight, as well as certain forms of cancer.
Among these factors, diet is the most important. Research has shown that unhealthy diets lead to obesity, which is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease in many urban societies. In addition, exercise improves health through continuous physical activity. Studies have also linked a more active lifestyle to greater happiness. If you want to increase your lifespan, make sure you keep up your exercise and diet. These simple changes will go a long way towards helping you achieve a healthier life.
Lifestyle factors also affect the body’s immune system, energy metabolism, steroid metabolism, and cellular growth. Additionally, they affect the production of inflammatory mediators and DNA repair. They may also affect the way cells respond to disease treatments. In fact, malnutrition increases the risk of developing some genetic diseases. Using medications rather than other interventions for disease prevention has helped Iran become one of the 20 countries with the highest health care costs in the world. About 15-40% of Iranians use drugs without a prescription, and the most commonly used are pain relievers, antibiotics, and eye drops.
The study results of the SENECA collaboration show that individuals who follow 5 low-risk lifestyle factors can extend their life expectancy by approximately 14.0 years for women and 12.2 years for men. Individuals who follow zero low-risk lifestyle factors have significantly shorter life spans. This suggests that if Americans followed these lifestyle factors more closely, they could narrow the gap with other industrialized nations. If we follow these steps, we could greatly improve our quality of life and achieve life expectancy that rivals many of them.
