From the ubiquitous diet books, fitness programs and even government initiatives on health, it’s clear our society is strongly invested in the belief that you can be and stay healthy—if only you do something about it. Eat more vegetables. Don’t smoke. Exercise more. But an opinion piece from Wired Magazine, written by Dr. Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist, and dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, brings up the interesting idea that just because you have a healthy lifestyle, doesn’t necessarily ensure your health.
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Galea first brings up the fact that according to a recent study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, despite our collective fixation on health, less than 3 percent of Americans actually live a healthy lifestyle (A healthy lifestyle is defined as the sum of four particular components: exercise, eating nutritious foods, maintaining a body fat percentage of under 20 percent for men and 30 percent for women, and being a nonsmoker).
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And Galea goes on to say that even if you meet all four components, your achievement carries no guarantee of improved health. Because disease doesn’t work like that:
The idea that lifestyle modification can lead to a better, more illness-free existence is a seductive one. It seems to offer a way of taking real ownership of your health. It implies that, with the right knowledge, you can predict which maladies you stand the greatest chance of facing. This makes prevention seem simple: If you can see the train coming, in order to preserve life and limb, you need only step off the tracks. This is not, however, how disease actually works.
He gives the example of asthma: It’s nearly impossible to predict whether you will develop asthma in your life; however, if you are an African American child, and you live in the United States, studies show you are about 6 percent more likely to suffer from it than your white peers. His point being that it’s problematic to try to predict individual health, but it’s much more effective to look at the wellbeing of entire populations. And in order to do that, we must be willing to study and tackle the root causes of disease.
Another example is cancer. There are, of course, a number of lifestyle conditions that can increase your risk of getting cancer: being obese, smoking, drinking alcohol, and not wearing sunscreen, etc. However, while individuals can reduce their personal risk of cancer, living in a world full of carcinogenic smoke obviates any potential benefit from those lifestyle changes. Galea argues that unless we do something about these factors, no amount of lifestyle modification is going to prevent and lower the burden of disease in populations.
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FM is very much a proponent of healthy living. The desire to get and stay healthy is worthy and admirable, and no one should ever be dissuaded from taking steps in the direction of greater wellness. However, it’s also interesting to consider and not to overlook the importance of factoring in the fundamental causes of disease in this world and among certain populations.
Curated article from:
Wired
