Importance of Healthy Lifestyle

This semester in SPHL100 we learned many things such as the difference between health equality and healthy equity, emergency preparedness procedures, and how to maintain healthy lifestyle choices. From all of these, I believe that the biggest challenge that public health faces in the 21st century is encouraging and promoting healthy lifestyle habits and choices. From excessive tobacco use, to unhealthy eating habits, the U.S. is home to the most obese and overweight people in the world. With unhealthy life choices comes diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and hypertension.

Especially with today's advanced and readily accessible technology, people are spending less time outside and more time at home sitting on the couch watching tv and/or playing video games.

Eating healthy and exercising regularly isn’t easy. Kids have to worry about school, and adults are too busy because of work. Who has time to eat salad every day and go to the gym 3 times a week? As a rising public health official these are the kinds of questions that I will have to research with my fellow colleagues. Public health officials study human health and to try and find ways to promote healthy lifestyles and habits. A concept that I learned in class that struck me the most is that the US is currently facing an obesity epidemic. As an aspiring public health professional, I will join the public health task force to teach and educate individuals that maintaining a healthy lifestyle isn’t as difficult as it seems. In the future, I hope to help spread awareness about the importance of eating healthy and exercising regularly by volunteering and visiting local farmers markets in my neighborhood and creating classes at recreation centers to educate kids on the importance of physical activity and healthy eating habits.

Speaking from a personal experience, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) a couple months ago. In fear for my health and my future, I asked my doctor what I can do to decrease the severity of it. She told me that she will prescribe me medication, but I refused because I don’t like taking synthetic medicine. For months, after I was diagnosed, I went to the gym every day, 7 days a week. And last week after going in for my routine checkup, my doctor told me that I don’t have PCOS anymore. When she asked me what I did differently, I told her excitedly, that I worked out every day and ate maintained a healthy and balanced diet. The moral of the story is that exercise is the most beneficial thing that an individual can do to maintain proper health. I will use this personal experience as a story to share to other individuals when I educate them on why it is so important to stay healthy. By doing this I hope to encourage individuals to get off their couches and get their heart rate pumping. You know what they say… “An apple a day, makes the doctor go away!”

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