About Health
Good health is something most of us take for granted. When it fails, it is often for reasons that could have been avoided. Protecting your health is mainly a matter of understanding what causes disease and other problems so that you can take appropriate steps to avoid them. Modern techniques of immunization and screening offer protection against a wide range of illnesses. By taking advantage of these and combining them with a healthy lifestyle, you can safeguard your health not only for the present but for the future as well.
Feeling healthy involves more than just being free from disease; it also involves a general sense of well-being. Your health and well-being depend in part on factors that may be beyond your control, such as living in a pollution-free environment and having secure employment. However, there are many aspects of your lifestyle that you can change or adapt in order to improve your physical and mental health and reduce your chance of becoming ill.
What Determines Health?
Your health is partly determined by your genes, but it is also inextricably linked with your environment and lifestyle. Your chance of developing many diseases is determined at the moment of conception by the mix of genetic material that you have inherited from your parents. The inheritance of certain faulty genes, such as those that cause cystic fibrosis, inevitably causes the development of disease. However, it is more common for a person’s genetic inheritance merely predispose him or her to a disease or disorder that may develop later in life, such as diabetes mellitus.
If you are geneticallly susceptible to a certain disease or disorder, whether or not you develop it may also depend on a number of other factors, many of which are related to the way you live. For example, lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, smoking and alcohol consumption are important determinants of health. Following a healthy lifestyle and having appropriate screening tests may enable you to moderate the effects of your genetic susceptibility on your future health. The environment in which you live also influences your health and susceptibility to certain diseases. For example, excessive exposure to the sun increases the risk of skin cancer. Living at high altitudes with a thinner atmosphere may pose problems for people who have respiratory disease. In towns and cities, high levels of atmospheric pollution may worsen the symptoms of respiratory diseases such as asthma.
Other determinants of health include age, gender, ethnicity, and occupation. For example, the risk of heart disease increases with age and is more common in men, Asians, and people who have sedentary jobs.
As you can clearly see, there are many factors that effect you and your health. By deciding to read this article, you have already taken an important step in being able to live a healthier lifestyle. There are many things you can do to improve your chances of staying healthy but you can’t always avoid getting certain illnesses or diseases because your predisposition may hinder your odds. Remember to eat healthy and get plenty of rest and exercise and that will take care of many of your concerns.