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Analyse the Causes and Effects of Lifestyle Diseases in the World

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Analyse the Causes and Effects of Lifestyle Diseases in the World

Lifestyle diseases are illnesses associated with the way an individual or a group lives, including cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, chronic liver disease, smoking-related diseases and obesity. There are a number of considerable factors that can lead to those sicknesses. For instance, external causes involve poverty, work pressure, unhealthy diets and unbalanced life, while internal factors refer to unawareness and misconception of those illnesses. Consequently, those sicknesses have significant long-term effects on individuals’ lives, which may shorten their life expectancy. Furthermore, lifestyle diseases have been regarded as one of the primary causes of mortality …show more content…

Thus, having sufficient sleeping time can be important and necessary for individuals’ health.
Three effects of lifestyle diseases in the developed world will be described in the following section, namely premature death, high mortality and economic cost. Lifestyle diseases are one of the major health burdens in the industrialized countries. Obesity and smoking-related illness have considerable long-term effects on the patients’ lives, which may lead to premature death. Over the course of the obese individuals’ lifetime, the physical conditions will deteriorate. This results from the relationships between fatness and a number of severe sicknesses. For instance, those who are overweight are probably with high blood pressure which is the main cause of heart disease and stroke (Nazario, 2011). Moreover, the risk of early death for those who are 40% overweight is twice that of normal-weight people (Ibid). Similarly, smokers also have a higher risk of premature death than non-smokers. A study has shown that average smoking can lead to a decline in life expectancy by 6.8 years, while heavy smoking reduces even two more years. However, if a smoker stops smoking at the age of forty, the lifespan will increase 4.6 years, and the disease-free period will be increased by 3.0 years (Streppel et al., 2007: 107-113).

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