Modern Disease

jacky

In the past, you were either sick or healthy. Modern chronic diseases are different. Modern chronic disease is on a continuum from health or wellness to disease, where a person can be moving from varying stages of wellness to various stages of disease.

The four major characteristics of modern chronic disease are: Malfunction of a physiological process Incurable Controllable Multiple Etiology

The continuum from health to disease.

Modern chronic disease is characterized by a malfunction in a physiological process. For example, in diabetes, the insulin does not function properly.
The majority of modern chronic diseases are incurable. The Centers for Disease Control have identified over 2600 diseases in this world, in which only about 500 have a cure.
Although these diseases are incurable, they are controllable. Modern medicine controls disease by pharmacological management, surgical management, and/or by lifestyle management. Because physical inactivity plays a significant role in the etiology of disease, physical activity plays a similar role in the prevention and rehabilitation of these diseases.
The etiology of modern chronic disease cannot be attributed to one single factor. The interaction of genetics and lifestyle appears to contribute to most to the etiology of modern chronic disease. Lifestyle accounts 51% of disease, whereas genetics accounts for 49%. For most of these diseases, one must first have the genetic predisposition for the disease. Subsequently, the way one lives their own lifestyle determines whether the disease manifests early or later in the life span. What are these lifestyle factors? They include:

• Nutrition
• Diet
• Smoking
• Stress
• Physical Inactivity
  

Nutrition is the kind or quality of the food eaten whereas diet is the approach to consuming the food. For example, a nutritionally balanced intake includes foods from all of the food groups, in proper amounts. The diet, or approach to eating, can be either nutritionally balanced or not. Diets can be modified by not only the consumption of too few to too many calories, but by the distribution of the calories. For example, all the food can be eaten in one meal a day or spread it out into six meals a day. The healthy approach to eating is to eat an isocaloric, nutritionally balanced diet in three or more meals a day.
Smoking cessation can have the largest impact on the health improvement of the world. Twenty percent of the deaths in the US can be attributed to tobacco use. Smoking is associated with cancer, heart disease, gastric ulcers, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and cerebrovascular disease. Smoking accounts for at least 30% of all cancer death. In addition to being responsible for 87% of lung cancers, smoking is also associated with cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, pancreas, uterine cervix, kidney, and bladder. Smoking is also a major cause of cardiovascular disease.
Physical inactivity, only recently, has been identified as a leading factor in the etiology of modern chronic disease. Hence, role of physical activity in the prevention of disease is the topic of this page.
Research methods, definitions of physical activity, and the measurement of physical activity must be included a discussion to understand the role of physical activity in disease prevention. The research methods are simple. However, the definition of physical activity and the methods to measure physical activity are not.


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