Health is Affected Greatly By Lifestyle and Behavior Patterns, Especially Those Related To Stress ##.
This two-parts write-up will cover but not limited to these areas:
1. How behavior affect health
2. What is stress and & its root cause
3. What causes frustration and typical
reaction.
4. How stress relates to health and disease
5. The best mechanism for managing stress,
etc.
There is a lot more than we could imagine.
Enjoy.
Health is priceless
Can health be free? Despite the high cost of health-care, one of the most important sources of health is free for the taking. Health psychologists have shown that many of the diseases that bedevil us are caused by unhealthy behavior.
Here is A Life Story of Mr Taylor
Taylor had managed to survive the rush of make-or-break term papers, projects, and classroom speeches. Then it was in to the finals where his tests seemed perfectly timed to conflict as much suffering as possible. His two hardest exams fell on the same day. Great. What luck!
On the last day of finals, Taylor got caught in traffic jam on his way to school. Two drivers caught him off, and gave him a one-finger salute. When he finally got to campus the parking lot was swarming with frantic students. Most of them were like within minutes of missing a final exam. At last Taylor spied an empty space. As he started towards it a Volkswagen darted around the corner and into "his" place. The driver of the car behind him began to honk impatiently. For a moment, Taylor was seized by a colossal desire to run over anything in sight
Finally, after a week and half of stress, pressure and frustration, Taylor's finals were over. Sleep deprivation, gallons of coffee, junk food and equal portions of cramming and complaining had carried him through. He was off for the summer. At last he could kick back relax and have some fun. Could he? Just four days after the end of school, he got a bad cold, followed by bronchitis that lasted for nearly a month. End of story.
Taylor's experience illustrates what happens when stress, emotion, personal habits, and health collided. Periods of stress are followed by illness (Biondi & Zannino, 1997).
Every living being believe and agree that health is crucially important, especially their own. Yet about half of all deaths in our world are primarily due to unhealthy behavior (Mokdad et al., 2004).
Healthy Psychology #### aims to do something about such deaths by using behavioural principles to promote health and prevent illness.
How Behavior Affect Health
Around the turn of the twentieth century, people primarily died from infectious diseases and accidents. Today, people generally die from lifestyle diseases, which are related to health-damaging personal habits. Examples include heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer (McGinnis & Forget, 1993).
What kinds of Behavior do you refer to as Unhealthy?
Clearly, some lifestyles promote health, whereas others lead to diseases, illness and death. While some causes of illness are beyond our control, many behavioural risks can be reduced.
Someone rightly observed, that "we have met the enemy and it is Us". For example, approximately 435,000 people die yearly from smoking related diseases. Similarly, being overweight doubles the chances of dying from cancer or heart diseases.
A person who is overweight at age 20 can expect to lose 5 to 20 years of life expectancy (Fontaine et al.; 2003).
Each of the following factors is a major behavioural risk
*high level s of stress, *untreated high blood.
pressure, *cigerate smoking, *abuse of
alcohol and other drugs, *overeating
*inadequate excercise, *unsafe sexual
behavior, *exposure to toxic substances,
violence, excess sun exposure, reckless
driving, *disregarding personal safety.
While the specific risk factors mentioned above many not be the only concern, some people have a general *disease- prone personaltily that leaves them depressed, hostile and frequently I'll. In contrast, people who are intellectually resourceful, compassionate, optimistic and non-hostile tend to enjoy Good Health. (Taylor et al.; 2000).
To be continued.