A healthy lifestyle does not guarantee good health

Before reading this article, google "healthy lifestyle". The search engine will give you more than a million results. Rather big number, but this is not surprising when you consider that the concept of "health" and "life" have become virtually inseparable. As we have strengthened the belief that we can protect their health, if they themselves Let 's take the case, but is it really?

The results of a recent research Mayo Clinic reported that, despite the general obsession with a healthy lifestyle, in fact it hold less than 3% of Americans. In a study of healthy lifestyle, defined as the sum of four components: exercise, nutrition, body fat percentage - up to 20% for men and 30% for women, the rejection of smoking.

Lifestyle overwhelming number of Americans does not meet all four criteria. But even if we begin to follow all these rules, it does not guarantee that health will improve. To really affect health, it is necessary to shift the focus to follow a healthy lifestyle on the other, often much more important factors.

Public health has focused on individual risk factors, which could affect health. In 2010, the UN called chronic diseases "lifestyle diseases", listing smoking, low physical activity and poor diet among the factors that cause these diseases. In the US, this way of thinking in vogue for 50 years: in 1948 began the Framingham Heart Study, aimed at studying the role of lifestyle in the development of cardiovascular disease. In the 1960s, scientists have focused on the study of chronic diseases, and in people's thinking has taken shape setting: health depends on a healthy lifestyle.

Now, however, public health researchers are beginning to understand that lifestyle changes do not guarantee changes in health. In 2001, the National Institutes of Health conducted a study, which lasted 11 years and which was attended by more than 5000 adults with Type II diabetes. The aim of the study was to find out whether intensive intervention in lifestyle can, aimed at weight loss, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, which can occur in patients with diabetes the second type. The study participants lost weight, however, the frequency of occurrence of the problems has not decreased with the heart.

The idea that lifestyle changes can lead to better health, seductive. It seems that this is an opportunity to take control of health. If you can guess what ailments you face, and avoid them. As with the train: you can see the train coming and to save the life and health should only leave off the rails. But this method is not a ride with the disease.

Our ability to predict a person's chances to get a particular disease is very limited. Too many factors influence the level of risk to be ill: social, environmental, political and even economic. Therefore, it is easier to evaluate the state of health of the nation than to predict the state of health of the individual.

It is practically impossible to predict whether or not you get sick with asthma. But in the African-American child living in the United States, the likelihood of developing asthma by 6% more than his white peers. This forecast is based on the fundamental factors that have historically shaped the health of the African-American community in the United States.

Again: to predict the individual health risks is extremely problematic, but it is possible to understand which diseases threaten a certain society. To combat these threats, we need to eliminate their causes, and therefore - to shift the focus from research to find a cure, research, the purpose of which - to protect public health.

For example, the organization Art beCAUSE raises money for research that attempts to identify the environmental factors that trigger the disease of breast cancer. Thus, the organization seeks to reduce the overall incidence.

Of course, there are some lifestyle factors that may increase the risk of cancer: obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption and the neglect of sunscreen. But here's the man decided to reduce cancer risk: lost weight, I quit drinking and smoking. At the same carcinogenic smoke from the environment, which he constantly blows negates all these potentially beneficial changes in lifestyle.

While we did not seriously begin to deal with external factors threatening the health, lifestyle, no modification will not lead to a decrease in the number of diseases.

In 2009, Dan Byutner (Dan Buettner) in a speech at TED has told, How to live to a hundred years. He stressed the special importance "optimal formula of longevity" - a way of life, which will greatly increase the chances of living happily ever after. Video gained more than 2.5 million views.

Great to see so many people interested in self-improvement: the desire to stay healthy is admirable and no one should be discouraged from the pursuit of well-being. But the sad thing is that, putting life above other fundamental causes of disease, we risk to lose attention to factors that lead to mass occurrence of diseases.