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Lifestyle factors are known as the things we do on a daily basis, whether it be exercise, diet, or even sleep. Those factors may affect your lifestyle based on what you choose to do with them. how long you choose to sleep or how often you exercise, and in today's blog we will see how lifestyle factors and health correlate and if they can go hand in hand when it comes to helping someone improve their lifestyle.
Lifestyle factors, in their formal definition, are the modifiable habits and ways of life that can significantly influence overall health and well-being.
First, let's start with the most important lifestyle factor: sleep. We all love sleep because it helps us feel refreshed and powerful, almost like a reset. Now, all physicians can agree when I say their recommendation for the average sleeping time is 8 hours. Now it may differ with age; for example, with teenagers, average sleep should last between 7 and 7 ¼ hours, and for adults, it should last between 7 and 9 hours (according to the Nationwide Children's Hospital and the Sleep Health Foundation).
But if you don't sleep according to how much you need, whether it be sleep deprivation or too much, both have severe health risks. Sleep deprivation increases the likelihood of dementia, diabetes (type 2), heart disease, etc. Too much is the same but with cognitive impairment, depression, etc.
Click below to see what time you should sleep according to your age!
Next are exercise and diet. Starting with exercise, an activity requiring physical effort carried out to sustain or improve health and fitness, it is a very crucial part of our lives, and we do it in many ways, whether it's walking to school every morning or going to the gym or fitness center every day. It is carried out in various ways, and its benefits are to improve your brain health, help manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, and improve your ability to do everyday activities. But there are also risks to not exercising, such as high blood cholesterol, high BP, type 2 diabetes, and many more.
Diet and exercise are like a system; one can't work without the other. Diets can be many things, from having a balanced diet to having a strict diet such as the military diet or the juice diet. Now diets don't have to be strict at all as long as the exercise balance is equal to the diet balance. Diets are useful in a way for fitness and helping your body protect you from many chronic illnesses. There are consequences to not being on a diet unless you are not at the level of fitness you'd like to be at. Diets are a personal choice, and no one should feel pressured to be on a diet!
In conclusion, I do believe that lifestyle factors and health do go hand in hand in improving one lifestyle, which means you can't do one and not do the other and expect improved health. These three are some of the most important things in our lifestyle, and don't forget that diet and exercise are both free choices unless there's a serious health risk from not doing them.
link for the amount of exercise recommended for each age! https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/age-chart.html
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