EFFORTS BY MEDICAL SCIENTISTS
Efforts by medical scientists to develop an effective cure for chronic diseases such as cancer and heart diseases have shifted from scientific research to behavioral medicine. Rather than experimenting with various drugs to develop the most effective combination, behavioral medicine has emerged as a multidisciplinary branch of scientific research that focuses on the analysis of people’s health behavior and psychological issues such as stress and depression and how they either cause, worsen or improve chronic ailments. Principally, the human physical healthy largely depends on one’s health behaviors. For instance, personal behaviors such as drinking alcohol, smoking, exercising, and sticking to a healthy diet have all been found to either cause or prevent some chronic diseases and hence improving one’s health can not only prevent chronic diseases but also help patients with chronic diseases live longer and better lives.
Smoking and the use of tobacco has been cited as the leading behavioral risk factor associated with several types of cancer and kidney failure. Cancer in smokers is the most challenging disease to manage due to the multiple organ damage and failure associated with the effects of nicotine. As a result, mortality rates among cancer patients who are smokers are higher than cancer patients with any other underlying medical condition. Smoking also causes various chronic diseases including lung failure, heart diseases, diabetes, and chronic bronchitis, the most prevalent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among smokers in the United States of America. According to XXXX, cigarette smoking harms almost every organ of the human body and significantly reduces the lifespan of the smoker. It is also considered a risk factor for tuberculosis, weakening of the human immune system, and certain diseases of the eyes. In the United States of America, more than 34.2 billion people are addicted to smoking cigarettes while 16 million Americans live with different health complications associated with smoking.
Smoking as a behavioral risk factor does not only affect smokers alone. Exposure to smoke, which is also known as secondhand smoking contributes to nearly 41,000 deaths of non-smoking adults and 400 deaths of infants every year. All these deaths occur as a result of either organ failure or development of a chronic condition due to exposure to cigarette smoke. In infants, exposure to cigarette smoke also increases the risk of sudden death syndrome, asthma, slowed lung development, and acute respiratory infections. The risks associated with secondhand smoking, therefore, makes it the highest cause and contributor to most chronic diseases. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that cigarette smoking alone causes more deaths than road accidents, HIV/AIDS, drug and alcohol use, and firearm incidents combined.
Eating unhealthy diets is another behavioral risk factor that has significantly contributed to the rising cases of chronic diseases amongst Americans. Unhealthy diets and poor eating habits impairs an individual’s daily health and increases the risk of developing diet-related health complications. Any homeostatic imbalance in the human body because of inadequate levels of a certain nutrient or excessive intake of certain nutrients leads to a health complication. According to XXXX, the large caloric intake amidst relatively low energy expenditure is the leading cause of obesity and obesity-related health complications, especially diabetes. Principally, consumption of foods rich in saturated fats, calcium, iron, and sodium amidst physical inactivity causes a variety of diseases such as hypertension, colorectal cancer, stroke, and cardiovascular diseases. On the contrary, the intake of fiber-rich foods and grains lowers the risk of hyperlipidemia and other forms of cancer. Analysis of dietary components of most American households indicates that over time, most diets have grown less nutritious with a significantly increasing daily calorific intake.
Safe for a small percentage of genetically inherited cases, obesity and overweight are pure lifestyle conditions that arise from individual diets. Consumption of chunk foods has subsequently been found to be a major cause of obesity among American children. While obesity is not a chronic disease, it has been established as the leading cause of diabetes 2, a chronic disease that mostly affects overweight and obese people. Obesity triggers some changes in the body’s metabolism, prompting the adipose tissue to release fat molecules into the bloodstream. As a result, the insulin-responsive cells develop some resistance to the salutary effect of insulin leading to the continuous production of insulin and hence diabetes 2 (XXXX). Medical practitioners, therefore, often advise diabetes 2 patients to feed on healthy diets and exercise frequently to shed their body weight and hence improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin.
The third behavioral risk factor which is closely related to unhealthy diets is physical inactivity. Unlike other risk factors, physical inactivity as a behavioral risk factor for chronic health conditions is primarily caused by individual lifestyles. According to XXXX, physical inactivity is a major health concern for working-class Americans in the upper social class who spent several hours at their working desks and hardly walk around as they have chauffeurs and personal drivers to take them around. The same social class has also been found to be the leading consumers of chunk foods such as Pizzas, chips, hamburgers, and other quick foods available in stop-over restaurants. While consumption of chunk foods is not a health risk perse, the associated lack of physical activity amidst high calorific contents of such foods is what yields chronic diseases.
Although it is almost impossible to the health effects of physical inactivity from unhealthy diet and obesity, scientific research has proven that avoidance of sedentary behavior through regularly engaging in physical activities reduces the risk of heart diseases, stroke, cancer, and depression as well as dementia (XXX). Effective physical activity should be independent of body weight, BMI, and individual dietary habits. Research also suggests that taking part in weight-bearing exercises helps to maintain bone density and hence prevent osteoporosis and related complications.
The last behavioral risk factor associated with chronic diseases is the consumption of alcohol. Principally, the quantity of alcohol consumed, consumption patterns, and the quality of the alcoholic drinks consumed have a causal effect on morbidity and associated chronic diseases. Although research suggests that moderate consumption of alcohol may bear some health benefits, excessive alcohol consumption causes liver cirrhosis, several types of cancer, stroke, hypertensive heart disease, and many other health complications. XXXX further explains that there are twenty-five chronic disease codes based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), including tumors and neuropsychiatric conditions that are directly caused by the consumption of alcohol. Alcohol consumption also causes intoxication which is a subsequent risk behavior for other diseases such as sexually transmitted diseases due to unprotected sex, physical injuries because of violent conduct, and traffic accidents and deaths due to reckless drunk driving.
In some cases, consumption of alcohol does not necessarily cause the development of chronic disease but instead has some dose-responsible relationship with the condition. In his case, the risk of the onset of a given chronic disease, or death from the chronic disease depends on the volume of alcohol consumed by the affected person. Such conditions include degeneration of the nervous system, residual psychotic disorder, alcoholic gastritis, alcoholic myopathy among many more others. According to XXX, alcohol is an intoxicant that either reduces or impairs the functionality of the brain. The numerous health conditions associated with alcohol consumption are a result of the fact that the brain controls every process of the human body and hence its impairment bears consequential outcomes, whether temporarily or permanently based on the volume consumed quality of the alcoholic drink and the frequency of consumption.
The interventions that people can take to maintain a healthy lifestyle and hence prevent most chronic diseases include eating healthy diets, exercising regularly, avoiding smoking, and moderate drinking. According to XXX, the most effective way to manage one’s weight is by being sensitive to individual diets. Similarly, there is sufficient information in the public domain about the dangers of excessive consumption of certain foods, the components of a healthy diet, and the risks of obesity and overweight. Safe for children who largely depend on their parents for their diets, it is largely perceived that most obese and overweight adults are just but insensitive or ignorant of such information. Regular exercising is also encouraged as it helps increase the metabolic activities in the body, thereby helping burn the excess fats that cause obesity and overweight. Physical exercising is not only meant for sportspeople who need to keep fit but it is also a health requirement for every person, more so for people at risk of adding more weight and hence growing obese or overweight.
While moderation may be encouraging for heavy alcohol drinkers, the only intervention for preventing chronic diseases associated with smoking is to quit smoking. Apart from the social effects of intoxication such as violence and irresponsible sexual behavior, all other effects of alcohol are confined to the drinker. However, the case is different for cigarette smoking due to secondhand smoking, sometimes also known as passive smoking. Cigarette smoking does not only affect the smoker but even people around him or her, which stand an equal risk of developing chronic illness just like the smoker. Hence, for alcohol, one may be advised to lower the volume of alcohol consumption, reduce the frequency, and where possible, drink alcoholic beverages with the lowest alcohol content. As for cigarette smoking, the only effective intervention is to quit smoking.
The cost of treating and managing chronic diseases is a huge burden on American taxpayers and the country’s economy. Even though America spends over $10000 per citizen every year on healthcare, the highest cost annual cost of healthcare per person across the world, life expectancy in America remains below average compared to other high-income nations. Behavioral risk factors such as excessive drinking, lack of physical exercise, unhealthy eating, and cigarette smoking are the major causes of the huge expenditure on healthcare, and low life-expectancy. According to the data released by the New Milken report, the annual total expenditure by the United States health care on the treatment of chronic diseases stands at $1.1 trillion. When the lost economic productivity is factored in the expenditure, the cumulative cost of chronic diseases rises to $3.7 trillion, a figure that is almost twenty percent of the country’s gross domestic product (XXXX). The report further claims that approximately 80% of the U.S health-care budget is spent on treating cigarette smoking-related complications. It is further projected that without changes in lifestyles and pressure on the food industry to regulate certain nutrient contents in the processed food, 83 million Americans will be suffering from at least three chronic health problems, thereby increasing the cost further (XXX). Hence, the only way to lower the cost of chronic diseases and relieve the economy of the extra financial burden is to reduce the number of Americans who smoke, are overweight, or consume too much alcohol, and hence changes in lifestyle.