Lifestyle choices are important to both our long-term and short-term health. But it’s easy to overlook this, especially with the improved accessibility of healthcare services, such as hospitals – the first place people run to as soon as something goes wrong. However, ask any medical expert, health worker, or a student of a post masters DNP online, and they’ll tell you that your lifestyle decisions can also play an influential role. With illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, and even some cancers being revealed as some of the leading causes of death in America, you may want to consider some lifestyle changes that can help lower risks.
Improved Diet Balance
About 1 in every 10 Americans have diabetes, with type 2 diabetes accounting for almost 95% of cases. Diabetes occurs when the lack of proper insulin use in our bodies drives up sugar levels. This is often provoked by unbalanced diet habits. So if you haven’t gotten around to including more fruits, vegetables, and organic products in your everyday diet, you may want to consider committing to this now, as a healthy and balanced diet helps the regulatory hormones in your body, such as insulin, better manage blood sugar levels. Although not a direct cure, balanced and nutritional diets may help lower your risks of developing type 2 diabetes.
Healthy eating habits may also lower the risk of other common health complications, such as heart disease. Swapping herbs and spices over foods with high sodium and wholegrain bread and cereals over more ultra-processed alternatives can improve cholesterol levels that will also help reduce the likelihood of developing high blood pressure. Limiting consumption of options that include highly refined carbohydrates, high-sodium meals, and even trans fats from fast food, chips, and even baked goods is also healthy for your heart and may play a role in reducing the associated risks.
Quitting Cigarettes
In the United States, cigarette smoking is a main cause of cancer and accounts for nearly one-third of all cancer deaths. Although it’s common for cancer to be inherited through genetics, chemicals within nicotine and tobacco are generally known to disrupt cell growth, provoke uncontrolled cell division, and increase the risk of cancer development.
Another health complication that can arise from smoking is chronic respiratory disease that affects the airways and lungs, such as asthma and pulmonary hypertension, and trigger symptoms including chest pains and shortness of breath. Even the World Health Organization states that you can reduce risks by avoiding exposure to contributing factors, including smoke from both cigarettes and fumes. Even with other options such as tobacco, the best guaranteed solution to reduce the likelihood of developing chronic respiratory diseases is to simply stop smoking.
Cutting out smoking from your habits may be helpful to reduce the likelihood of developing cancer and other common diseases as well. Even within hours of quitting, your blood pressure and heart rate will start to show signs of improved stability, and your carbon monoxide levels will drop. Your heart is then better able to supply blood to vital organs, and stress is reduced from the pressure of blood flow through your arteries. These outcomes are promising as they demonstrate lowered risks towards developing heart disease and potential diabetes.
Improving Your Sleep Schedule
Many of us often underestimate the value of sleep, especially for our health. According to the experts, too little and too much sleep can both be detrimental to the human body in general. As sleep helps our systems to regulate hormones, improper sleep can provoke hormonal changes that could raise blood pressure and increase your risk of developing heart complications. On the other hand, too much sleep can also be unhealthy, lowering your body’s ability to maintain insulin activity, which can spike your blood sugar level, further exposing you to risks of type 2 diabetes and weight gain.
The consequences of poor sleep don’t just lead to heart disease and diabetes alone. Although research on this isn’t vast, quality sleep can also play a role in evading the early development of cancer. The American Cancer Society highlights that a chronic lack of quality sleep can also weaken our immune system and reduce its capacity and ability to detect and remove abnormal cell growth. Abnormal cell growth is a contributing factor towards a higher likelihood of cancer development.
Balance is key. Experts will often recommend aiming for somewhere between 7-9 hours of adequate sleep every night to ensure a proportional amount of rest that will allow your body to rejuvenate but also keep the essential hormones and your immune system in active duty. Getting less than 6 hours can cause our bodies to fall behind, so maintaining an equilibrium anywhere between 7 to 9 hours of your sleep time is not only ideal but necessary.
Whilst there is no 100% guarantee every solution youtry will be the game changing treatment, making lifestyle adjustments to your daily habits, such as what you put in your mouth and how you manage your sleep schedule, could play a role in reducing the likelihood of developing common diseases that are prevalent in the United States, including diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, heart disease, and even some cancers. We’re reflections of our health. With this in mind, how we manage our lifestyle can play a role in how we fare well against avoiding serious health complications that have impacted many already.
