Chronic diseases should be prevented from an early age

1. What are chronic diseases?

Chronic diseases are a general term for non-communicable clinical diseases with a long course of illness, complex causes, greater health damage and social harm, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke), chronic respiratory diseases (such as chronic bronchitis), obesity, diabetes and metabolic diseases, as well as malignant tumors.

Factors that lead to chronic diseases include biological genetics, environment, lifestyle, etc., with lifestyle influences accounting for a larger proportion.

Figure 1: Common chronic diseases

2. Diet and Chronic Diseases

As the saying goes, "diseases come from the mouth", in the past it meant that eating unhygienic food caused infectious diseases. Nowadays, "diseases come from the mouth" also means unreasonable eating methods, bad eating habits, etc., which lead to related chronic diseases.

For example, a long-term high-calorie diet can easily cause obesity; a high-oil diet can easily cause hyperlipidemia, coronary heart disease, etc.; a high-sugar diet can easily lead to the occurrence of diabetes; a high-salt diet can easily cause high blood pressure; long-term consumption of smoked, barbecued and moldy foods can easily cause cancer, etc.

Figure 2: High-calorie foods

Figure 3: High-fat foods

Figure 4: High-sugar foods

Figure 5: High-salt foods

Figure 6: Spicy foods

If you want to prevent diet-related chronic diseases from an early age, you need to eat a diverse, balanced and light diet, with less oil, sugar, salt, and barbecue, and more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

3. Lifestyle and Chronic Diseases

In daily life, in addition to bad eating habits that can easily lead to chronic diseases, unhealthy lifestyles such as staying up late, lack of physical exercise, smoking, and excessive drinking are also risk factors for a variety of chronic diseases.

For example, staying up late and lack of physical exercise may lead to coronary heart disease and induce and aggravate high blood pressure. Long-term smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke may lead to chronic bronchitis and even lung cancer. Excessive drinking and long-term alcoholism may lead to chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis.

If you want to have a healthy and strong body from an early age, you need to combine work and rest in your daily life, go to bed early and get up early, ensure adequate sleep, develop a good habit of regular exercise, and stay away from tobacco and alcohol.

4. Prevent chronic diseases from childhood

Think about it

To prevent chronic diseases from an early age, what healthy diet and lifestyle do we need to maintain?