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In this article we will discuss about how to develop a healthier lifestyle.
Introduction to Healthier Lifestyle:
Have you ever wondered why some individuals live to be more than one hundred years old, whereas most people live only sixty or seventy years? Studies of persons who live to be more than one hundred indicate that several factors may play a role in their extended life spans.
One of these factors is diet: Long-lived persons often show a pattern involving greater-than-average consumption of grains, leafy green and root vegetables, fresh milk, and fresh fruits; and they tend to eat low to moderate amounts of meat and animal fat.
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In addition, they maintain low to moderate levels of daily caloric intake (1,200 to 3,000 calories) and consume only moderate amounts of alcohol each day. Physical activity is perhaps the most important factor contributing to longevity and good health among long-lived people.
Many work outdoors and walk a great deal. That is, regular physical activity is an integral part of their lives, continuing well into old age. Additional factors that may contribute to their extended life span are continued sexual activity, personality characteristics, family stability, and continued involvement in family and community affairs during advanced years.
In sum, while genetic factors certainly play a role in determining life span, research suggests that people may be able to extend their lives significantly by adhering to a lifestyle that includes a balanced, low-fat, low- calorie diet; regular exercise; and continued activity during later years.
On the basis of such findings, a growing number of health professionals and psychologists have adopted an approach to health and wellness that is based on prevention strategies techniques designed to reduce the occurrence of illness and other physical and psychological problems. Primary prevention is considered the optimal prevention approach. Its goal is to reduce or eliminate the incidence of preventable illness and injury.
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Primary prevention strategies usually involve one or more of the following components-educating people about the relation between their behaviors and their health, promoting motivation and skills to practice healthy behaviors, and directly modifying poor health practices through intervention.
Secondary prevention focuses on decreasing the severity of illness that is already present by means of early detection. Thus, individuals learn about their health status through medical tests that screen for the presence of disease.
Although early detection of certain diseases is traditionally carried out by health professionals and often requires sophisticated medical tests, exciting research is under way to teach patients methods of self- examination, especially for early detection of breast and testicular cancer.
Primary Prevention- Decreasing the Risks of Illness:
In most instances, our initial attempts to change our health behaviors are unsuccessful. Typically, we become aware of the need to change behaviors; we initiate change and we experience a series of failed attempts at change. Only sometimes do we actually succeed in changing our behaviors. The nature of this process indicates that we need help; a variety of intervention programs to meet our varied needs and purposes.
Health-Promotion Messages: Marketing Healthy Lifestyles:
We are constantly bombarded with messages about health risks. Numerous nonprofit organizations use television commercials, newspaper articles, magazine ads, radio advertising, and now the Internet to warn us about unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, unprotected sex, and alcohol and drug abuse, and to tell us about their associated risks, including cancer, heart disease, and AIDS.
These campaigns typically provide information about symptoms that may indicate the presence of a health problem, such as shortness of breath or chest pains in the case of heart attacks, and information about the relation between specific behaviors and disease; for example, “Smoking is the number one cause of heart disease.”
But can mass media campaigns alone produce widespread changes in behavior? There is little evidence that they can. One reason for the limited success of these programs may be the media’s depiction and promotion of unhealthy habits, which counteract health-promotion messages. For example, Story and Faulkner (1990) computed the frequency of commercials advertising healthy versus unhealthy food and beverages. Most of the prime-time commercials were for unhealthy foods and beverages. The clearest example was the large difference in numbers of commercials for fast-food versus family-style restaurants.
Another reason for the limited success of these programs is that they ignore important individual differences that exist among people, such as different degrees of readiness to change. As you might expect, interventions tailored to meet the interests and needs of individuals or specific target groups are significantly more effective than general, one-size-fits-all interventions. For example, as part of one smoking- cessation intervention, researchers mailed out birthday cards and other materials that were designed specifically for each of several specific target groups.
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A birthday card tailored for African American participants in the study included the following message:
“Each year, more black Americans die from smoking than from car crashes, AIDS, alcohol, murder, heroin, cocaine, and other drugs put together. If we count the number of people it kills, smoking is the number one problem facing the black community.”
The results showed that 32 percent of the participants who received the tailored prevention materials quit smoking, compared to 12 percent among participants who did not. Velicer and Prochaska (1999) found similar results using a computer-based expert system to select intervention components on the basis of individual participants’ specific needs and an assessment of their readiness to change.
Third, research suggests that the effectiveness of health-promotion messages depends on the way they are framed. Some health- promotion messages seem to work best when they emphasize the benefits of a certain health practice (gain framing), whereas others work best when they emphasize the costs of risky behaviors (loss framing). The relative effectiveness of a gain-framed or loss-framed message depends, at least in part, on whether the function of the recommended behavior is prevention or detection.
Research seems to indicate that gain framing works best for prevention behaviors that help people to avert the onset or development of a health problem, such as using sunscreen consistently or refraining from smoking cigarettes. In contrast, loss framing seems to work best for messages intended to motivate detection behaviors, such as performing regular breast self-examinations or obtaining a yearly mammography screening.
Finally, some evidence suggests that fear may also play a role in our responses to health-promotion messages. For example, individuals with high fear of contracting AIDS rate advertisements about AIDS as more effective than people with low fear of contracting AIDS. These findings suggest that ad campaigns regarding deadly diseases such as cancer or AIDS may be able to enhance their effectiveness by playing to people’s fear of contracting the disease.
The Work of Staying Healthy: Motivating the Couch Potato:
Research indicates that only a small minority does exercise regularly and intensely enough to reduce his or her risk for chronic disease and premature death. This is surprising, since it is now very well known that regular and vigorous exercise can significantly reduce individuals’ risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, even in the presence of other health risk factors, including smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, and high blood cholesterol. It has been found that even less vigorous forms of activity can be beneficial if done consistently.
Healthful benefits can be obtained from modest levels of exercise, if performed regularly. What does this mean? Some research seems to indicate that fifteen minutes of running or thirty minutes of walking can produce healthful benefits, although newer evidence suggests that better outcomes, in terms of overall fitness and strength, may be achieved through shorter, more intense aerobic workouts.
Exercise can affect mental health, too. A recent study by Kramer and his colleagues (1999), for example, showed that modest exercise defined as walking briskly for an hour, three to four days per week significantly improved the cognitive functioning of a group of older adults who had previously been sedentary for most of their lives. Exercise has also been found to improve self-concept, alleviate feelings of depression, and reduce anxiety.
These effects are particularly apparent just after a workout, but there may also be some long-term mental health benefits from participation in exercise. Changes in mood following exercise may result from socializing and being involved with others; running with a friend may improve mood because of the companionship the exercise provides. Mood may also improve because of exercise’s effect on our self-efficacy our enhanced confidence in our ability to perform a behavior such as running a mile or completing an aerobics workout.
So how can we get the rest of the couch potatoes off the couch? Some research suggests that starting and then maintaining an exercise program requires that people arrange their environment so that it supports the desired exercise behavior and weakens competing behaviors.
First, it is important to arrange effective cues that become a signal to exercise. Working out in the same location, doing a similar warm-up routine, and recording and posting the results of one’s physical activity can be effective in cueing future exercise behavior. It is also important to arrange when exercise occurs, to minimize the effects of the cues for competing behaviors.
For example, individuals who have a tendency to work late should establish a morning training routine to minimize competition with a busy work schedule. An increasing number of businesses have helped to minimize schedule conflicts by building on-site exercise facilities for their employees.
Second, it is also important to arrange for consequences that maintain exercise behavior. Initially, it is critical for new exercisers to seek out sources of rewards for their exercise behavior and to avoid potential sources of punishment, including muscle soreness, fatigue, and injury. Paradoxically, those most in need of consistent exercise, such as obese or extremely out-of-shape persons or older individuals, may be those most subject to punishing consequences—including the risk of heart attack—if they overdo it.
Finally, the presence of a strong social support network can greatly increase adherence to a lifelong exercise habit. Many people find they enjoy exercise more when it is incorporated into social activities they find pleasurable; for example, organized sports or group-based activities such as aerobics or dancing.
Secondary Prevention- The Role of Early Detection in Disease and Illness:
Psychologists are taking an increasingly active role in developing motivational strategies to get people to take part in early detection procedures techniques used to screen for the presence of high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and some forms of cancer. The identification of these conditions at an early stage can make an enormous difference in the chances for treatment success in some cases the difference between life and death.
Screening for Disease: Seeking Information about Our Health Status:
The fact that early detection and treatment of an illness is more effective than later detection and treatment is the foundation for screening programs. Research evidence suggests that the widespread use of available screening techniques could decrease the incidence of cardiovascular disease through the early detection of high blood pressure and cholesterol, and could significantly reduce the number of cervical, colon, and prostate cancer deaths.
Many companies, colleges, community organizations, and hospitals have screening programs to test for high blood pressure and serum cholesterol. Unfortunately, many people either do not take advantage of screening programs at all or fail to get screened regularly. Forgetting and underestimating the time since the last test are the primary reasons people wait too long between screenings.
Interventions that heighten awareness or serve a reminder function, such as physician reminder systems and local advertising campaigns, can increase the frequency of screening visits.
As with educational messages used to promote primary prevention, researchers also believe that educational messages used to promote screening procedures need to be tailored to people’s varying levels of knowledge and screening frequency; for example, a person who has never had a screening will require a different motivational message than the person who believes that a single screening is enough.
The most significant factors that predict an individual’s use of screening, as indicated by the health belief model, are the person’s beliefs about the possible benefits of screening, perceptions of the severity of possible illnesses, perceptions of his or her vulnerability to disease, and beliefs about what other people (friends, family) think about screening.
Self-Examination: Detecting the Early Signs of Illness:
Self-examination can be instrumental in the early detection of both testicular and breast cancer. The cure rate for testicular cancer is extremely high over 90 percent—if the cancer is detected early Unfortunately, in nearly half of the testicular cancers diagnosed, the presence of the disease is not detected until it has spread from the testes to the abdomen and other organs, and in these cases the chances of a full recovery are significantly less.
Despite the fact that testicular self-examination techniques are available and are effective in revealing the early signs of cancer, many males remain unaware of these procedures or do not know how to perform them correctly.
The dangers associated with breast cancer pose challenge for females. Some researchers suggest that breast cancers detected early through secondary prevention programs, such as breast self-examination, clinical breast examination, and mammography, have an 85 to 90 percent chance of being cured.
Women are most likely to obtain mammography screening when their physician recommends it, a fact that highlights the critical role these professionals play in promoting early detection. Programs designed to change certain beliefs are also effective in getting women to obtain mammography screening; for example, beliefs concerning their susceptibility to breast cancer, the severity of breast cancer, and the potential benefits of mammography screening.
Flourishing:
Flourishing is a positive psychology concept which a measure of overall life well-being and is viewed as important to the idea of happiness. Flourishing has been defined as- “to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.” Flourishing is the opposite of both pathology and languishing, which are described as living a life that feels both hollow and empty.
Many components and concepts contribute to the overall concept of flourishing and the benefits of a life that can be characterized as flourishing. It exists as an umbrella concept because it includes and incorporates many other concepts in the positive psychology field such as cultivating strengths, subjective well-being, positive work spaces, etc.
Flourishing conceptually helps the social scientists and psychologists study and measure fulfillment, purpose, meaning, and happiness. Keyes (2002), a famous researcher in this area, argues that mental health does not imply an absence of mental illness rather; mental health is a “separate dimension of positive feelings and functioning.”
He claims that flourishing is the epitome of mentally healthy adults having high levels of emotional well-being; they are happy and satisfied; they tend to see their lives as having a purpose; they feel some degree of mastery and accept all parts of themselves; they have a sense of personal growth in the sense that they are always growing, evolving, and changing; finally, they have a sense of autonomy and an internal locus of control, they chose their fate in life instead of being victims of fate.
Further he says that only one-third of the Americans are actually flourishing and the rest, two-thirds, are languishing, which, as he states, does not imply that they are mentally ill, they just lack the required traits to flourish.
Researchers have argued that flourishing is characterized by four main components- goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience. In another view, an important component of flourishing making it such a strong concept in positive psychology, is that it must be a true pursuit of human flourishing; it must be a genuine search for positivity that is grounded in the reality of current circumstances.
Positive emotional feelings such as moods, and sentiments such as happiness, carry more personal and psychological benefits than just a pleasant, personal subjective experience. Flourishing widens attention, broadens behavioral repertoires, which means to broaden one’s skills or regularly performed actions, increase intuition, and increase creativity. Second, good feelings can have physiological manifestations, such as significant and positive cardiovascular effects, such as a reduction in blood pressure. Third, good feelings predict healthy mental and physical outcomes. Also, positive affect and flourishing are related to longevity.
The many components of flourishing elicit more tangible outcomes than simply mental or physiological results. For example, components such as self-efficacy, likability, and pro-social behavior encourage active involvement with goal pursuits and with the environment. This promotes people to pursue and approach new and different situations. Therefore, flourishing adults have higher levels of motivation to work actively to pursue new goals and are in possession of more skills and resources.
This helps people to satisfy life and societal goals, such as creating opportunities, performing well in the workplace, and producing goods, work, and careers that are highly valued in any society. This success results in higher satisfaction and reinforces Frederickson’s Broaden and Build model, for more positive adults reap more benefits and, are more positive, which creates an upward spiral.
Studies have shown that people who are flourishing are more likely to graduate from college, secure “better” jobs, and are more likely to succeed in that job. One reason for this success can be seen in the evidence offered above when discussing languishing; those that flourish have less work absenteeism, as “job withdrawal.” Finally, those who are flourishing have more support and assistance from coworkers and supervisors in their workplace. Flourishing has been found to impact more areas than simply the workplace.
In particular, community involvement and social relationships have been cited as something that flourishing influences directly. For example, those who flourish have been found to volunteer at higher levels across cultures. Moreover, in terms of social support and relationships, studies have shown that there is an association between flourishing and actual number of friends, overall social support, and perceived companionship.
Ayurveda- An Indigenous Model of Health and Well-Being:
An individual is an epitome of the universe, as all the material and spiritual phenomena of the universe are present in the individual, and all those present in the individual are also contained in the universe … As soon as he realizes his identity with the entire universe, he is in possession of true knowledge which stands him in good stead in getting salvation.
Ayurveda, the ancient medical system of India, offers a different perspective on life and health in which wholeness, integration, freedom, connectivity, creativity, and enjoyment figure as central concerns. The etymology of the word “Ayurveda” summarizes its primary objective—A Science of Life and Longevity (ayus meaning “life, vitality, health, longevity,” and veda meaning “science or knowledge”).
Its main concern is to support and prolong a healthy human life. Consistent with its thesis of the identity of mind and body, Ayurveda posits that any disturbance, physical or mental, manifests itself both in the somatic and in the psychic spheres, through the intermediary process of the vitiation of the “humors.” Ayurvedic therapy as described by Charak in Charak Sanhita, aims at correcting the doshas or the imbalances and derangements of the bodily humors (namely, vata or bodily air, pitta or bile and kapha or phlegm) and restoring equilibrium.
It does so by coordinating all the material, mental, and spiritual resources of the whole person, recognizing that the essence of these potencies is the manifestation of cosmic forces. In principle, Ayurvedic therapy for all diseases cannot be other than a blend of the psychological and the physiological. In practice, the psychological part of intervention includes suggestion, exhortation, consolation, and recommendation of meditative procedures.
At the level of body it emphasizes proper diet, activities, and remedies according to season and climate, at the psychological level it involves restraint of the mind from the desire for unwholesome objects; and there is also a “divine” therapy, including all sorts of spiritual rituals and penance. Medical intervention at the physical level is of four types- diet, activity, purification, and palliation.
As a paradigm, it shows how body, mind, and spirit interactions can be predicted, balanced, and improved upon to enable people to live gracefully and harmoniously. Its prime concern is not with “healing” in the narrow sense of curing illness, but in the broader sense of promoting health and well-being and prolonging life.
The goal of this enhanced vitality is the achievement of all the values that life has to offer. Healing, therefore, is no less than liberation. In Ayurveda, balance or equilibrium (sama) is synonymous with health. Also, the maintenance of equilibrium is health and, conversely, the disturbance of the equilibrium of tissue elements characterizes the state of disease.
How healthy a person is depends upon one’s level of consciousness. The word for health in Sanskrit, svastha, means “established in oneself” or “self-abiding.” It is nothing but establishment in one’s own essential nature. The medicine should always be centered on the whole person (rashipurusha) rather than on the disease.
While delineating health, Ayurveda emphasizes on one’s relationship with the environment, seasons, and events within which one is situated. Depending on the incongruence / congruence between the person and the environment, anything can become health/disease-promoting. Thus, this view is decentered and non-dispositional in an important way. Ritu Satmya, for example, is the principle of adaptation that states that food should be according to the season (rainy, winter, and hot).
As Zimmerman (1987) has noted, the ideal is to accustom oneself to hit on the right choice of regimen, so that the nature of what is eaten is rendered appropriate to the nature of the one who eats it. Thus, it is a health-promoting adaptation. In addition to adaptation, Ayurveda also emphasizes on resistance to diseases or immunity.
It is reflected as vitality at the level of body that makes resistance to both biological illness and physical injury. At the psychological level, it is reflected in mental clarity and equilibrium from which one can respond from other person’s behaviors and communications, and from within one’s own psyche, without extreme reactions of suffering or behavior damaging to self or others.
The normal functioning of a person, according to Charaka, includes the following criteria: alleviation of pain, normal voice, normal complexion, increased strength, appetite, proper digestion and nourishment of body, proper elimination of waste, proper sexual functioning, sufficient sleep at the proper time, absence of dreams indicating morbidity, happy awakening and unimpaired mind, intellect, and sense organs (Charaka Samhita, 3: 8.89). Achieving these goals is pursued according to the type of constitution of a particular person.
According to Ayurveda, body is an instrument for achieving higher goals (Purusharthas: dharm, artha, kam, and moksha) and a person must look after it properly for the sake of these goals. The terms sharira and deha used for body indicate that it breaks and is a container or envelope, respectively. It has many connotations in various traditions. Ayurveda views body as the ground of well-being at material as well as spiritual levels.
Charaka calls human body as a vehicle of congruous junctions (samyogavahin). The physician has to orchestrate proper conjunctions, foods, and medicinal substances, with the person’s given constitution and the circumstances. Ayurveda favors gradual over sudden cure to protect one’s vitality, which controls the immune system. The gradual elimination of addictions gives the system necessary time to acclimatize itself to living without a crutch.