The Impact of Unhealthy Lifestyle on Health: A Risk Factor Analysis

This essay explores the significant health risks associated with an unhealthy lifestyle. It highlights how lifestyle choices, such as poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking, and alcohol consumption, directly contribute to serious health issues like cardiovascular diseases, stroke, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and various cancers, including lung cancer. The essay references studies and data to support the correlation between these risk factors and increased mortality rates. Furthermore, the essay emphasizes the importance of adopting a healthy lifestyle through balanced diets, regular exercise, and avoidance of harmful habits to mitigate these risks and improve overall health and longevity. The paper underscores that lifestyle plays a crucial role in determining health outcomes and lifespan, advocating for proactive measures to prevent disease and promote well-being.

Running head: RISK FACTORS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
RISK FACTORS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1RISK FACTORS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
Life does not always go as planned, and as a person ages into adult and middle
adulthood those unexpected life changes can be significantly disruptive. Leading an
unhealthy life can lead to negative health outcome. Proper and healthy lifestyle helps in
fighting against a lot of diseases and hence protects us from them. Lifestyle has a direct
relation to health. It can also result in death. Diseases like stroke, heart diseases, obesity,
respiratory problems and type 2 diabetes mellitus are mainly caused due to leading an
unhealthy lifestyle. Such diseases iof occurs severely can also result in death.
According to (Ec.europa.eu, 2019),) most people in UK dies due to diabetes related
cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Most strokes sufferers are diabetic. This occurs mainly
due to lifestyle changes, leading an unhealthy one. Obese people are more prone to be
diabetic than others. Obesity is the main factor which leads to severe diseases. Eating
unhealthy and without consciousness are the most important parameter of an unhealthy
lifestyle. Obese patients suffer from diabetics one day or the other. Mostly cardiovascular
problems if not diabetic related occurs due to unhealthy lifestyle. Individuals with higher
body mass inex are more prone to cancer, a serious illness (Bhaskaran et al., 2014). Smoking
and drinking are the two injurious things which do no good to the body rather increase the
risk of cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Many people around the world die due to stroke
(Carter et al., 2015). Another main dreadful disease which is caused by smoking is lung
cancer. Cancer as known by everyone is a dreadful disease and barely has any treatment.
Smokers are more prone to lung cancers than others (Islami, Torre & Jemal, 2015). Smokers
also are prone to other respiratory diseases like asthma. However out of the two, lung cancer
is more serious and often lead to deaths. Alcohol consumption also destroys liver and causes
liver damage which also results in increasing the death ratio in many countries (Williams et
al., 2018). Sleep also hampers health and can also results in many mental diseases. In the
Whitehall II Study, the researchers also concluded that sleeping less than five hours doubles

2RISK FACTORS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
the risk of death from heart diseases- which is declared as the leading cause of death in
United Kingdom (Bulmer & Burch, 2013).
Proper lifestyle changes and leady a healthy life will help the individuals mainly
adults from such diseases. Adults as they reached a certain age should eat healthy as well as a
proportionate amount (Petrogianni, et al., 2013). They should be engaged with free body
exercises and yoga. Adults who are smokers should also get rid of that cigarette as it is
decreasing their lifespan. They can achieve that by participating in any form of physical work
which will decrease their urge to smoke (Khanna & Greeson, 2013). They can also use
nicotine patches as they are also helpful. Alcohol consumption is injurious to health. It should
also be stooped in order to increase their lifespan. Individuals’ main adults consume alcohol
when they are depressed or alone. Hence, such adults should keep them busy by doing some
kind of work and also can visit a counsellor who will help them in decreasing their state of
depression (Savic et al., 2017). Such individuals’ need family support the most.
Therefore, lifestyle plays an important role in increasing one’s life span. Unhealthy
lifestyle will result in occurrence of dreadful diseases which leads to death. Hence, one
should lead a healthy lifestyle in order to live and explore more.

3RISK FACTORS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
References
Bhaskaran, K., Douglas, I., Forbes, H., dos-Santos-Silva, I., Leon, D. A., & Smeeth, L. (2014). Body-
mass index and risk of 22 specific cancers: a population-based cohort study of 5· 24 million
UK adults. The Lancet, 384(9945), 755-765.
Bulmer, S., & Burch, M. (2013). The Europeanisation of Whitehall: UK central government and the
European Union.
Carter, B. D., Abnet, C. C., Feskanich, D., Freedman, N. D., Hartge, P., Lewis, C. E., ... & Jacobs, E.
J. (2015). Smoking and mortality—beyond established causes. New England journal of
medicine, 372(7), 631-640.
Ec.europa.eu. (2019). Retrieved 21 July 2019, from
https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/state/docs/chp_uk_english.pdf
Islami, F., Torre, L. A., & Jemal, A. (2015). Global trends of lung cancer mortality and smoking
prevalence. Translational lung cancer research, 4(4), 327.
Khanna, S., & Greeson, J. M. (2013). A narrative review of yoga and mindfulness as complementary
therapies for addiction. Complementary therapies in medicine, 21(3), 244-252.
Petrogianni, M., Kanellakis, S., Kallianioti, K., Argyropoulou, D., Pitsavos, C., & Manios, Y. (2013). A
multicomponent lifestyle intervention produces favourable changes in diet quality and
cardiometabolic risk indices in hypercholesterolaemic adults. Journal of Human Nutrition and
Dietetics, 26(6), 596-605.
Savic, M., Ferguson, N., Manning, V., Bathish, R., & Lubman, D. I. (2017). “What constitutes a
‘problem’?” Producing ‘alcohol problems’ through online counselling encounters. International
Journal of Drug Policy, 46, 79-89.
Williams, R., Alexander, G., Armstrong, I., Baker, A., Bhala, N., Camps-Walsh, G., ... & Dillon, J.
(2018). Disease burden and costs from excess alcohol consumption, obesity, and viral

4RISK FACTORS OF UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE
hepatitis: fourth report of the Lancet Standing Commission on Liver Disease in the UK. The
Lancet, 391(10125), 1097-1107.