Part 1:Lifestyle Diseases Videos | Common Lifestyle Diseases, What Causes Them & How to Reverse Them

Sedentary Lifestyle: Everyone's Reality in Modern living

According to the Centre for Science and Environment, “over 61% of all deaths in India are attributed to lifestyle or non-communicable diseases (NCDs).”

Welcome back to my blog! This is part 1 of the ‘Lifestyle Post/Video Series’. Make sure you go through all of the lifestyle series posts/videos till the end as there will be a lot of interesting information for you.

This post includes discussion around what are the lifestyle issues or lifestyle problems? Why do they occur? How can you prevent lifestyle diseases?

Below are the answers for each of the questions related to lifestyle diseases discussed above:

Q. What are lifestyle diseases?

Lifestyle diseases generally arise due to our bad or faulty lifestyle. Faulty lifestyle includes habits that we usually inculcate during the course of life such as eating a lot of junk food, eating too often or too much, sitting or standing in one place for a long period of time, taking too much stress, smoking, alcohol, no exercise, and several others. Some of the lifestyle problems or lifestyle diseases include diabetes, heart diseases, high blood pressure, hypertension, obesity, arthritis, thyroid problems, constipation, depression, insomnia, and others.

Q. What are the common habits that lead to lifestyle diseases?

Common lifestyle habits that are mostly responsible for lifestyle diseases include:

(i) Sedentary Lifestyle or Physical Inactivity: We spend most of our day time sitting at our work desk in one place and hardly move. Or if it is a weekend, we spend most of our days sitting on a couch watching movies or surfing the internet, talking over the phone, playing video games, etc. For homemakers also, it has become difficult to keep themselves active due to the reason, most of the daily work has either become automated requiring the use of machines with minimum human efforts. Nowadays many of the homemakers have helpers at home helping them in daily chores and most of the time people work standing or sitting in one place due to the modern home arrangements. So, in order to make our lives more comfortable, we have ultimately come up with solutions that are harming our own health!

(ii) Unhealthy Diet or Processed Food: Moreover, our food has also become comfort food; either we like processed or junk food or we rely on packaged or instant food options. Our choices have become so unhealthy that we have detached ourselves from nature.

Additionally, most of our food items include white carbs and sugar which is not healthy at all. They are just garbage i.e. food without nutrients. Food with white carbs that we commonly eat in our daily life includes bread, pasta, noodles, cakes, etc. Processed food items include samosa, kachori, etc. Packaged food items include frozen food, dips, sauces, packed tomato purees, jams, etc.

(iii) No Exercise: Due to our busy lifestyle, we hardly get time for exercise or to go for a walk. So, the food we eat takes a lot of time to get digested and even sometimes remain partially digested or even undigested.

(iv) Taking too much stress and inadequate sleep: Stress can harm not only your mental health but your physical health as well. Stress and inadequate sleep weaken the immune system leaving your body prone to health problems.

Some other lifestyle habits that might lead to lifestyle diseases include stress, lack of sleep, tobacco, smoking & alcohol, etc. 

    

Q. How can you prevent or reverse lifestyle diseases? Or how can you change lifestyle habits?

So, by now, you might be getting your answers for how can you prevent yourself from getting any lifestyle diseases or if you have any, how can you reverse them! Yes, the answer to this question is very simple i.e. by correcting your lifestyle, you can prevent yourself from lifestyle diseases and even reverse them. However, it is not that simple as we have been following these lifestyle habits for decades or even for most of our lives. So, correcting our faulty lifestyle or replacing our bad lifestyle habits with healthy habits require a lot of effort and discipline. 

(i) Walk more often and increase your activity level: In place of a sedentary lifestyle or physical inactivity, you have to make sure that you take a walk for about 30 minutes a day and do simple activities to make yourself active during the day. Try to move around after every hour you spend sitting or standing in one place. This will help you in proper blood circulation in the body preventing yourself from lifestyle diseases. To learn about simple activities to make yourself active throughout the day, you can watch out my previous video. You will get the link in the description box below.

(ii) Replace your unhealthy food options with a healthy food item: Most importantly, you need to understand that the less processed or packaged or junk food you eat, the less likely you will get any lifestyle disease. Firstly, the food we eat hardly has any nutrients; secondly, if there are any nutrients in our food, we either process them a lot, fry them or make them spicy and end up vanishing all the nutrients that usually a natural food item contains. The more you eat natural and unprocessed food, the more you feel healthy. This is the reason, we generally give emphasis on having homemade food with less oil and fewer spices. Although it might not be possible to totally avoid white carbs or processed or packaged food, at least you can balance them with natural food items with lots of nutrients. For example, if you take a simple home-cooked meal for 29 days in a month, you can choose to have some outside food like pasta or noodles, or burger or pizza on the 30th day of the month as a treat. But don’t overeat and only take a small proportion of these meals as unfortunately they are only meant to satisfy your taste buds but have no actual nutrients.

(iii) Reduce stress and take a good night’s sleep: Nature and social networking are the two best options that can help you reduce stress. Additionally, taking a good night’s sleep is important for maintaining your mental as well as physical health. Taking adequate sleep reduces anxiety, induces calmness, boosts memory, and improves immunity.

Important Source Links:

https://www.cseindia.org/lifestyle-diseases-the-biggest-killer-in-india-today-8228