What are the benefits of a healthy lifestyle?

What is a healthy lifestyle?

A lot of things can come to mind when considering what is a healthy lifestyle and what benefits can be obtained from it. However, several aspects are often mentioned, which include a good diet, regular exercise, not smoking, and maintaining a healthy weight. Thus, a healthy lifestyle is not just a single factor, but many factors together that bring about overall well-being. Adopting a healthy lifestyle early in life has many benefits that will carry over into adulthood and later life. It can help you to maintain not only good physical health, but also good mental health as well. Many types of studies have indicated that most chronic illnesses, like cardiovascular disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes, are the result of lifestyles fueled by poor nutrition and physical inactivity. So let’s focus on two of the foundations of a healthy lifestyle: exercise and diet.

The need for exercise

There is now overwhelming evidence that exercise over the course of a lifetime leads to a longer lifespan and less chronic disease. So starting to exercise regularly at a young age may be best for lifelong fitness. Physical inactivity is considered to be at the basis for many chronic conditions:

• type 2 diabetes;
• cardiovascular disease;
• hypertension.

Type 2 diabetes is a highly prevalent disease that is moderated by lifestyle, with exercise as the most powerful preventive lifestyle factor.² Physical inactivity interacts with other factors such as age, diet, gender, and genetics to increase risk factors for developing a range of chronic diseases. However, adequate physical activity can prevent many of these risk factors from appearing. Exercisehas a number of benefits. Not only does it improve cardiovascular health and cardiac output, it also improves mental health. Studies have shown that exercise can improve cognition, depression, anxiety, and even help prevent neurodegenerative diseases. A healthy lifestyle to lower cardiovascular risk factors including high cholesterol, hypertension, and absence of type 2 diabetes throughout young adulthood is also associated with a low risk for cardiovascular disease in middle age.

There are a large range of activities you can think about. If you like aerobic activities, you could go for a jog or a bike ride. If you like less strenuous activities, consider going for a short walk in the morning to start off the day, or later on to break it up. So what are you waiting for? If you’re not already physically active choose an activity and get started today!

The central role of diet

It is sometimes considered that diet is the single most significant risk factor for staying healthy. Notwithstanding, many people do not always follow a healthy diet consistently. As with exercise, a healthy diet has benefits that include prevention of cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. There are many diets and dietary approaches to choose from. One such diet is the Med Diet 4.0, which goes beyond the Mediterranean diet by providing four sustainable benefits:

• major health and nutrition benefits
• low environmental impacts and richness in biodiversity
• high sociocultural food values
• positive local economic returns

There is growing evidence that a Mediterranean-type diet has preventive effects on cardiovascular diseases, which may be related to its positive action on cardiometabolic risk, by decreasing the risk of diabetes and metabolic-related conditions. It has been suggested that these positive benefits are related to the high content of dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Whatever type of diet you choose, it is worthwhile to keep in mind several suggestions made by the World Health Organization:

• eat lots of fruits and vegetables;
• reduce intake of fats, sugars and salt;
• consume beans, legumes, lentils, fish, poultry, and lean meat;
• use milk and dairy products that are low in both fat and salt;
• select foods that are low in sugar;
• limit consumption of sugary drinks and sweets.

Following these general rules can help you to feel your best and get the most out of your diet with an eye towards the future.

Conclusion

Exercise and diet are powerful tools in the fight to prevent and treat numerous chronic diseases. Given its whole-body, health-promoting nature, long-lasting integrated responses to healthy diet and exercise are achieved to the greatest extent when starting earlier rather than later. Lastly, keep in mind that dietary supplements can be used to help you get the vitamins and minerals, that your body needs for optimal functioning