Here is your free sample essay on Lifestyle

“Life style” is a term which we generally use to mean the way people live reflecting the entire range of social values, attitudes and activities.

It includes lifelong personal habits and also cultural and behavioral patterns. It is through the social interaction with parents, groups, and friends and through school and mass media we get to our lifestyle.

Today our health, fitness and illness are greatly influenced by our lifestyle which covers many aspects of human behaviors like patterns of eating, drinking (alcohol), smoking, exercises, drug dependence, human reproduction, sexual behaviors etc. Promotion of health requires a healthy lifestyle.

In the developed countries nowadays many major health problems e.g. coronary heart diseases, obesity, lung cancer, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, automobile accidents, suicides, and homicides etc. are linked with lifestyle changes.

In developing countries like ours, risks of illness and death still have a connection with the traditional lifestyles characterized by poor sanitation condition, poor nutrition, personal hygiene, elementary human habits, customs and cultural patterns etc.

Factors like adequate nutrition, enough sleep, sufficient physical activity, personal hygiene, habits and behavior contribute to promote optimum health and all these are deeply related to individual lifestyles.

Lifestyle change more than any other factor is considered to be the best way of preventing illness and early death in our society. It is clear from a recent report published by Public Health Service in United States that the percentage contribution of four sources to early death reveals that Life care system accounts for 9.8%, Human biology for 16.4%, Environment for 21.8% while Lifestyle alone contribute 83.5%.

The implication is that active living contributes significantly to good health and wellbeing, can enhance health and quality of life. And all of us should learn to alter our lifestyles to foster lifetime fitness and wellness.

Two concepts “Health” and “Wellness” should be clearly understood in order to understand their relation to lifestyle.

“Health” is optimal wellbeing that contributes to quality of life. It is more than freedom from disease and illness which are associated with circumstances that upset homeostasis, although freedom from disease is important to good health. Optimum health includes high level mental, social, emotional, spiritual, and physical fitness within limits of one’s heredity and personal disabilities.

“Wellness” is the integration of all parts of health and fitness (mental, emotional, spiritual and physical) that expands one’s potential to live and work effectively and to make a significant contribution to society.

Wellness reflects how one feels (a sense of wellbeing) about life as well as one’s ability to function effectively. Wellness is opposed to illness, is sometimes described as the positive components of good health. Healthy lifestyle is critical to wellness.

Just as modern-day illness like heart disease, cancer and diabetes, high blood sugar and blood pressure problems are caused mostly by unhealthy lifestyle; healthy lifestyle can ensure an improved feeling of wellness. Regular physical activity leads to healthy lifestyle to prevent hypo kinetic diseases and conditions.

A positive total outlook on life is essential to wellness. A person with wellness is one who finds satisfaction in work, is spiritually fulfilled, enjoys leisure time, is physically fit, socially involved and has a positive emotional-mental outlook. This can be put in the following tabular form:

Three strategies can be applied to achieve optimal health for all people. They are:

i) Disease and illness treatment

ii) Disease and illness prevention

iii) Health and wellness promotion

The first strategy includes such efforts as to treat and cure common diseases and illness. In this strategy maximum responsibility rests on the medical and health professionals.

The second strategy includes measures that will help prevent disease and illness and here much of the burden lies with the communities and individuals within these communities although the fact remains that the medical and public health agencies have a great role to play in implementing this strategy.

The third strategy i.e. Health and Wellness promotion includes efforts to bring changes in lifestyles to enhance the quality of life that helps people to achieve their potential to live full active lives. Whereas the treatment and prevention strategies focus on illness, disease and eventually at Death’s door; promotion strategies focus on wellness.