Health and prevention: the virtues of good habits (healthy lifestyle, nutrition, etc.)
Health in your daily life
How to stay healthy? If it is essential to be able to treat oneself, it is just as important and even a priority to play prevention. Objective: to guard against the risk of disease by focusing on a healthy lifestyle likely to increase our life expectancy.
In terms of health prevention, acting on the causes of illnesses is complementary to action to treat them. Our behaviours, our habits and our lifestyle (diet, sport, consumption of alcohol or tobacco) constitute a potentially harmful basis for health.
To optimize our life expectancy in good health, it is therefore necessary to find the right balance between our tastes, our desires, our habits and our ability to change them or even the risks that we more or less accept to take… This process of prevention and health education is based on personal factors that influence our state of health, on our physical and psychological condition and on our ability to generate “better living” in the long term.
Healthy life expectancy
While life expectancy continues to increase, it has recently been observed that that of “life in good health” is reaching a plateau and may even be tending to decline in certain European countries.
In France, we live today in good health on average up to 64.2 years for women, and 63.1 years for men. This decline is directly linked to the increase in chronic diseases which affect younger and younger people and whose development is linked to environmental and behavioral determinants (poor lifestyle, harmful habits, unsuitable diet, etc.).
More than 3 million people suffer from cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, etc.), nearly 2 million people suffer from cancer and as many from diabetes. There is a rapid progression of neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s), respiratory diseases (asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary bronchitis), allergies or fertility problems (one in seven couples are confronted with it)…
Stay healthy thanks to a healthy lifestyle adapted to each person
While these health data remain impersonal averages, they nevertheless indicate a trend that concerns us all by affecting each of us in a specific and unique way. We are not equal and identical in the face of the challenges of our health, so it is important to interpret them in the light of one’s own existence in order to adopt an appropriate lifestyle. Physical and psychological characteristics (weight, sensitivity to stress, fatigue, fragility or, on the contrary, particular resistance, etc.), family history, lifestyle habits and behaviors (diet, physical activity, consumption of tobacco, alcohol, etc.) are all personal factors that can influence the risks to which one is exposed. In terms of health prevention,
Health and nutrition: the importance of a suitable diet
The health instructions to follow for a balanced diet can be difficult to follow, including from a financial point of view. The food budget is indeed a significant and compulsory expense… However, without trying to adopt an ultra restrictive lifestyle due to a drastic and expensive health regime, some nutrition advice is quite easy to follow and not necessarily more expensive than junk food “.
Good nutrition and health reflexes: get used to a varied and balanced diet, preferring fresh products rather than those already prepared, limiting excess sugar and salt or even fat (food already contains it naturally), avoiding “nibbling” between meals, containing the quantities…
As in many areas, it can be useful to question the relationship between quality and quantity: “eat less but better”, easier said than done… but still!
Lifestyle habits and health prevention
The use of the car or public transport, the mechanization of work and the tertiarization of jobs, the urbanization and even the peri-urbanization of places of life make physical activity less natural on a daily basis… These lifestyle habits impose the integration of physical activity into our days. Objective: to improve our lifestyle and thus preserve our health. Walking, physical exercises at home, regular practice of a sport, the possibilities are varied and all valid.
Another risk factor in terms of health: health risks related to our behavior and our lifestyle. These include the consumption of tobacco and alcohol, among other products whose excesses are not recommended to guarantee a life expectancy in good health worthy of the name. Without considering life from an overly austere or ascetic point of view, being wary of one’s behaviors when they tend to become too frequent, even addictive, can be a good bulwark to limit the risks.
In terms of lifestyle and health prevention, respecting fairly regular rhythms is another essential aspect: being attentive to one’s own sleep, to one’s state of fatigue and relaxation… conditions that are closely related to everything else ( diet, physical activity, consumption of stimulants…)… A whole where everything is linked!
Adopt the right reflexes in terms of prevention
Individually: after having identified our own strengths and weaknesses in relation to our health behaviors and habits, the challenge is to modulate them to find an overall physical and psychological balance. This health balance will always be singular, it can also evolve over time and with changes in habits and lifestyles… The main thing: to always be able to place oneself in a position of critical questioning in relation to one’s behavior and life (diet, sport, etc.), to succeed in detecting when they can go from beneficial to harmful for the overall balance. This does not necessarily imply refraining from behaviors that are pleasant to us and bring us well-being. On the other hand,
Collectively: to improve our life expectancy in good health, each of us should be made aware of the interactions between lifestyle habits (diet, sport, etc.) and health and well-being. This awareness of a better lifestyle should not be part of a dogmatic and arbitrary approach that would fix too rigidly and uniformly the appropriate behaviors to adopt. We are all different in terms of health prevention, this diversity is a wealth that must be maintained. But this richness requires everyone to ask themselves the right questions and be able to implement the answers that are appropriate to them, within a fairly broad framework, which is that constituted by the law.
