Healthy Lifestyle Introduction Health is a state of physical, mental and emotional well-being felt by persons of any age in their personal and social life. The right to health, just as the right to good education, is one of the fundamental rights of any human being. Promotion of healthy lifestyles has been gaining popularity as a tool for developing public health. Studies indicated that healthy lifestyles enhance lifelong health, increase quality of life, and decrease morbidity and mortality ( 2007). Lifestyle choices and individuals’ behaviors have the potential to influence health and improve the quality of life (Lyons & Lungile, 2000). During the transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescents establish patterns of behavior and make lifestyle choices that affect both their current and future health. Active and health-enhancing leisure time by outdoor physical activities can significantly increase the benefits of physical activities and facilitate adoption of a healthy life
Bad Sleep Turns Your Immune System Against You DNA is altered, dumping too many white blood cells into the body in what appears to be a lasting problem. Photo: Pexels/Nathan Cowley L ack of sleep is known to lower your immune defenses and lead to higher risk for all sorts of diseases in the near term and over time. New research offers some insight as to why: Sleep that’s too short or fragmented during the night actually alters the DNA inside stem cells that create your body’s white blood cells, key to the immune system. The result is somewhat counterintuitive: The stem cells kick out too many white blood cells, flooding the body and causing an overreaction of the immune system that can trigger inflammation, which in turn can lead to heart disease and other inflammatory disorders. Catch-up sleep, already deemed of dubious value, does not seem to rectify the problem. “The stem cells have been imprinted, or genetically altered, under the influence of sleep restriction,” said study team