Healthy Lifestyle

Physical Activity:

Physical activity is an exercise you do that improves your health physically and mentally. For example, doing activities like swimming and going to the gym helps prevent health risks like obesity as it helps maintain the right amount of weight your body needs. This is important because it prevents excess weight as being overweight can cause high blood pressure, heart and fatty liver disease as well as being underweight can affect your immune system, and for women it can cause irregular menstrual cycle as it will cause fertility issues. Which will all have a negative affect on your career and social life as being overweight or underweight can cause you to have a poor social life as you would distance yourself from friends and family due to low self esteem, confidence and body image which can lead to depression and job dissatisfaction. This is important as it affects your life by causing you to have a unhealthy lifestyle as you would be depending on alcohol or drugs to motivate you to work and bring you joy and as a result it increases your health risk by causing health conditions like chronic disease, strokes and high blood pressure.

However, doing exercise like cycling helps avoid these health conditions as it boosts your energy which improves your mood causing you to be more happy, social and motivates you to do more hours at work which affects your economic stability and social life. Furthermore, physical activities help reduce anxiety and relieve stress which allows the increase of blood flow to your skin cell and that helps with anti aging. This is important as it promotes self confidence and better body image which encourages you to have a healthy lifestyle as it reduces the chances of stress allowing you to improve your sleep and improves body shape which will inspire you to exercise more.

In addition to that even doing simple activities like cleaning the house and gardening can improve your health because even though your heart wouldn’t be beating as fast as when your playing football, you would still be a little out of breath as your energy level will be above resting level which improves your mood as when your house is more organised you would feel happier. Furthermore, in order to have a healthy lifestyle and avoid health conditions you would need to do physical activities which increases your heart rate as suggested by the NHS/Health department that you doing at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times per week and your child doing one hour of exercise everyday will keep you lot fit and healthy. 

Alcohol:

Alcohol is a drink that contains a drug that affects every organ in your body. For example, beer, wine and whiskey are all alcohols which can affect your health life negatively and positively. Alcohol affects people positively as it helps relieve stress by making you more confident which improves your social skills as you be more friendlier and feel happier. In addition, having a decent amount of red wine can lower blood pressure which is good as having high blood pressure can block blood flow to the heart. 

However, a health risk of excessive drinking is depression as if you depend on it for confidence and relieving your stress you would end up drinking more than the moderate amount and without the alcohol you have nothing to rely on to give you happiness which will cause you to feel depressed. This can affect your life aspect because you would be less social with your family, friends which will cause you to close away from them and it can affect your economic stability as you wouldn’t be in the mood to go work which will lead to you doing less working hours as your always feeling down. Furthermore, drinking too much can cause brain tissues to die which will lead to a stroke and drinking for a long period of time can lead to liver cirrhosis which is a disease that develops overtime and that can cause death. 

In contrast to that, these issues can be avoided while having fun drinking by consuming the recommended guideline which is to not regularly drink more than 14 units a week and to not drink it all at once but across the week for both genders. This is important as it encourages you to have a more healthy lifestyle by helping you avoid any health risks like excessive drinking.

Smoking:

Smoking can only affect your life in a negative way unlike drinking alcohol this is because it contains hundreds of different chemicals and fumes like butane, cadmium which only causes harm towards your body. For example, smoking interferes with your immune system as it makes it harder to fight off colds due to carbon monoxide being in cigarettes which causes a disease called  chronic obstructive pulmonary and that makes you struggle to do physical activities as you would be breathless quickly. This has a negative affect on your life as if you are getting out of breath easily you would struggle to work because you would be tied and that causes you to do less hours at work which leads to stress as you would struggle with economic stability. Furthermore, if your immune system is bad that also has a negative affect on your physical activity and that leads to an unhealthy lifestyle as you would rely on alcohol or smoking to motivate you and give you energy to work. In addition to that some people tend to smoke because they believe it helps them stay calm and relieve stress but others smoke due to peer pressure or addiction.  

However, the positive effect to stop smoking is after ten years the risk of having a heart attack falls to the same level as a person who never smoked. In addition, another positive effect is your lung capacity could improve by up to 10% within nine months according to NHS which makes a differences to when you become old.

Stress:

Stress is a hormone your body releases emotionally when your under pressure of losing something, it can affect you positively or negatively. For example, when you’re under pressure you tend to fear failure more which motivates you to try harder at work and succeed in life. This has a positive affect on your life as it helps with economic stability by inspiring you to increase your job satisfaction which encourages career growth. In addition to that, stress can be fun as you feel satisfied when it’s over which benefits your health because it puts you in a good mood, for example, doing activities like bungee jumping and skydiving brings excitement to your body.

However, stress can also affect you negatively as too much stress can lead to health problems like heart disease, eating disorders and diabetes. For example, when you’re too nervous or anxious your heart rate, blood pressure increases which causes your body to produce too much adrenaline hormone and that affects your life as you would have a stroke or a heart attack. In addition, stress can affect your career and life choices as you would feel more overwhelmed. For example, as an athlete you would struggle with confidence to perform due to pressure from fans,friends, family and the fear of disappointing them which will cause you to depend on drugs to relieve the stress, enhance your ability and motivate you to perform at a high level. This has a negative affect on you as it can lead to more stress as you would be living in fear and guilt for using drugs for your performance which will lead to depression.

Furthermore, too much stress can cause obesity as your body will produce more cortisol hormone which encourages fat storage in the belly and causes you to eat fatty foods. This affects your life as you would turn to alcohol or smoking to give you confidence as you would have a low self esteem due to stress causing your skin to be more sensitive which allows space for breakouts like acne as cortisol tells glands in your skin to make more oil. In addition, stress also affects your economic growth as you feel emotionally exhausted which causes you to be tired, less motivated to do your daily activity and that leads to poor social life as you would be more distance from friends and family due to your lack of energy. 

Having said that you can improve with the way you cope with stress by taking control of the situation as suggest by Professor Cary Cooper, which is important as if you know the cause you can work on improving. For example, avoiding unhealthy habits like depending on smoke to relieve stress, being active like going to the gym and talking to someone about your problems like a friend, family or counsellor can all help help cope with stress.   

Diet:

A diet is the amount of food and drink that you consume in a day which affects your overall health. For example, a unhealthy diet consist of fatty foods, milky products and bad lifestyle choices like smoking, taking drugs and drinking too much alcohol which imbalances your nutrition. This is important as poor nutrition leads to health risks like stress, diabetes and obesity which all affects your life in a negative way. For example, having an unhealthy diet can cause tooth decay which can affect your social life as you would distant yourself from friends and family due to poor nutritioning ruining your skin which leads to a low self esteem,confidence and body image. Furthermore, poor nutrition can also affect your career as you would always feel exhausted, tired, moody and not motivated to go to work or exercise which leads to job dissatisfaction and an unhealthy lifestyle as you would depend on alcohol or drugs to bring you joy. 

However, a healthy diet affects your life in a positive way as you feel motivated to go to work and exercises which improves your social life, career growth and health. For example, having a healthy diet that consist of sweet potatoes, oats, broccolis, spinaches, fish and seeds puts you in a good mood which encourages you to do more exercise as it all contains the right amount of carbohydrates, proteins and vegetables. Which is important because exercise reduces health risks like chronic disease, obesity, high blood pressure as well as boosting your immune system and improving your digestion system which is also important because it helps maintain the right amount of weight your body needs.

Furthemore, it also affects your life aspect as when your nutritional intake is balanced you have more energy which increases job satisfaction as you would be working more hours and as a result your social life and economic stability improves leading you to a long, happy, successful life. In addition, in order to maintain that healthy lifestyle you would need to follow the guidelines recommended by the NHS as that will help improve your health conditions. For example, you should try eat less white bread, white pasta, white rice as eating too much white bread can lead to heart disease and white pasta and rice don’t contain many nutrients as its been removed during its process which causes the body to break it down into glucose quickly. Furthermore, the NHS also recommend that percentage of food you should consume from the eatwell plate is 15% for dairy, 12% for protein, 7% for fat, 33% for carbohydrate and 33% for fruit and vegetable. This is so your nutritional intake is balanced which is important as it promotes a healthy lifestyle.