Abstract
Lifestyle-related disorders are the important risk factors, which are widely distributed in the population and greatly influenced by the lifestyle of the urban people. Lifestyle diseases or diseases of longevity or diseases of civilization are diseases that appear to increase in frequency as countries become more industrialized and people live longer. Some maintain a distinction between diseases of longevity and diseases of civilization. Certain diseases, such as diabetes or asthma, appear at greater rates in young populations living in the “Western” way; their increased incidence is not related to age, so disease of longevity cannot accurately be used interchangeably for all diseases.
In many developed as well as developing countries, people’s diet has changed dramatically which generally is with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, soft drinks, and alcoholic beverages and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Factors in diet, sedentary lifestyle, and the house are thought to influence susceptibility to the many diseases. These determinants of the lifestyle are expressed through intermediate risk factors, such as raised blood glucose, abnormal blood lipids, high blood pressure, and overweight/obesity.
The other aspects of lifestyle have also changed like reduction in physical activity, mostly living indoors, stress, and consumption of alcohol or smoking. Stress is now being linked to cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory infections, and suppressed immune functions. Due to many of these changes in lifestyle, people are getting prone for many diseases like diabetes and cancer. Studies also suggest that diets and/or lifestyle of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Burkitt DP (1982) Western diseases and their emergence related to diet. S Afr Med J 61:26
Death statistics data from National Center for Health Statistics, National Office of Vital Statistics, 1947 for the year 1900 (page 67), for the year 1938 (page 55)
Dhabhar FS (2013) Psychological stress and immunoprotection versus immunopathology in the skin. Clin Dermatol 31:18–30
Forrester T, Cooper RS, Weatherall D (1998) Emergence of Western diseases in the tropical world: the experience with chronic cardiovascular diseases. Br Med Bull 54:463–473
Galobardes B, Costanza MC, Bernstein MS, Delhumeau C, Morabia A (2003) Trends in risk factors for lifestyle-related diseases by socioeconomic position in Geneva, Switzerland, 1993–2000: health inequalities persist. Am J Public Health 93:1302–1309
Key TJ, Allen NE, Spencer EA (2002) The effect of diet on risk of cancer. Lancet 14:861–868
Lichtenstein P, Holm NV, Verkasalo PK (2000) Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer. N Engl J Med 343:78–85
Marshall GD (2011) The adverse effects of psychological stress on immunoregulatory balance: applications to human inflammatory diseases. Immunol Allergy Clin N Am 31:133–140
Martínez-Carrillo BE et al (2011) Repeated restraint stress reduces the number of IgA-producing cells in Peyer’s patches. Neuroimmunomodulation 18:131–141
McCray CJ, Agarwal SK (2011) Stress and autoimmunity. Immunol Allergy Clin N Am 31:1–18
McGovern PG, Pankow JS, Shahar E et al (1996) Recent trends in acute coronary heart disease—mortality, morbidity, medical care, and risk factors. The Minnesota Heart Survey Investigators. N Engl J Med 334:884–890
Meng L, Maskarinec G, Lee J (1999) Lifestyle factors and chronic diseases: application of a composite risk index. Prev Med 29:296–304
Morabia A (1996) From disease surveillance to the surveillance of risk factors. Am J Public Health 86:625–627
Murray CJ, Lopez AD (1997) Global mortality, disability, and the contribution of risk factors: global burden of disease study. Lancet 349:1436–1442
Painter NS (1982) Diverticular disease of the colon. The first of the Western diseases shown to be due to a deficiency of dietary fibre. S Afr Med J 61:1016–1020
Pappas G, Queen S, Hadden W, Fisher G (1993) The increasing disparity in mortality between socioeconomic groups in the United States, 1960 and 1986. N Engl J Med 29:103–109
Roelcke V (1995) Between individual therapy and political intervention: campaigns against “diseases of civilization” between 1920 and 1960. Gesundheitswesen 57:443–451
Sasanabe R, Watanabe Y, Shiomi T (2012) A sleep disordered breathing as the lifestyle-related diseases. Nihon Rinsho 70:1211–1215
Sharma M, Majumdar PK (2009) Occupational lifestyle diseases: an emerging issue. Indian J Occup Environ Med 13:109–112
Sobra J, Ceska R (1992) Diseases of civilization from the aspect of evolution of the human diet. Cas Lek Cesk 131:193–197
Steyn K, Fourie J, Bradshaw D (1992) The impact of chronic diseases of lifestyle and their major risk factors on mortality in South Africa. S Afr Med J 82:227–231
Stojanovich L, Marisavljevich D (2008) Stress as a trigger of autoimmune disease. Autoimmun Rev 7:209–213
Thacker SB, Stroup DF, Rothenberg RB (1995) Public health surveillance for chronic conditions: a scientific basis for decisions. Stat Med 14:629–641
Vartiainen E, Puska P, Pekkanen J, Tuomilehto J, Jousilahti P (1994) Changes in risk factors explain changes in mortality from ischaemic heart disease in Finland. BMJ 309:23–27
Walsh NP, Gleeson M, Pyne DB, Nieman DC, Dhabhar FS, Shephard RJ, Oliver SJ, Bermon S, Kajeniene A (2011) Position statement. Part two: maintaining immune health. Exerc Immunol Rev 17:64–103
Zöllner N (1990) The relevance of diet for civilization diseases, especially atherosclerosis. Wien Med Wochenschr Suppl 106(suppl):11–12
Some Related Resources
CDC Scientific Data, Surveillance, Health Statistics, and Laboratory Information
health.india.com › Diseases and Conditions › Diabetes
Morbidity and mortality weekly report
www.bips.uni-bremen.de/en/the…and…/lifestyle-related-disorders.html
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gupta, V., Sengupta, M., Prakash, J., Tripathy, B.C. (2017). Lifestyle, Stress, and Disorders. In: Basic and Applied Aspects of Biotechnology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0875-7_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0875-7_22
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0873-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0875-7
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)