How to keep ourselves healthy mentally and physically is a challenge humans have grappled with for thousands of years. But after decades of research and development into mental and physical health practices, which has led to improvements in eradicating infectious diseases, a new problem has arisen of chronic lifestyle diseases. Now that the world can provide many nutritional options and life saving drugs, why are so many people becoming chronically ill and mentally depressed?
In fact people living longer are being affected more because of the massive global increase of chronic lifestyle and mental illness. The newly appointed research centre at University of Sydney is leading a new research project to find real world solutions for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. However, many initiatives over decades around the globe have failed to find firm evidence where they tended to focus mainly on the genetic and cellular basis, but as many now acknowledge, these chronic lifestyle conditions are far more complex than just their biology.
A new focus at the research centre University of Sydney research project to understand how human biology interacts with the environment, to understand how psychology, social, economic, urban environment, education, food industry, media and government are being taken into consideration to see if they play a role in chronic disease.
While many of us think of chronic lifestyle diseases as a problem confined to the developed world, millions of people in developing countries adopting a westernised lifestyle, are being affected as well. For example, a tendency to keep eating until we satisfy our appetite for protein could explain the soaring rates of obesity among some disadvantaged groups who fill up on cheaper foods that are higher in carbs and fats, but then end up overeating. On the other hand eating too much protein when people can afford to buy those types of foods is associated with a lower lifespan.
Other approaches to manage chronic lifestyle diseases being trialled include incentivising people’s eating habits as part of an array of health promotions and food labelling with the star rating system,which, currently is under review. Other examples include policies around the globe at the retail level, regional level and educational level.
There are many misconceptions about health impact on humans but there is no one size that fits all.
Many people are starting to question how their health is being affected by the quality of food, diet as well how their lifestyle choices affect their health. Frequently people search for a quick fix, a pill that will cure all, but in reality taking more responsibility for their own health care rests with them. In practice the search often starts with a sense that they need to do something different.
From the perspective of Ayurveda preventative medicine on healthy living and management of chronic lifestyle diseases, it is a focus on knowledge that brings the body and mind into balance using diet, behaviour and thinking, lifestyle and herbal medicine. According to Ayurvedic principles disease is a disruption of balance leading to disturbance in equilibrium in the body and mind.
Lifestyle diseases are the outcome of the way we live our lives but by modifying our lifestyle, improving diet and making the environment healthier, lifestyle diseases can be reduced.
The approach to healing with Ayurveda is based on customised strategies that include prevention of causative factors, purifying the body and mind, lifestyle interventions and rejuvenation therapies. Rather than work with the symptoms Ayurvedic treatment is designed to find the root cause of ill health.
In the 21st century when conventional medicine does not have answers to many health care needs, particularly lifestyle diseases, Ayurveda offers a more personalised and customised treatment option which contributes effectively to human health care.
Lifestyle improvement that aligns individual body constitutions is the simplest and effective way of self healthcare for health promotion, disease prevention and chronic lifestyle disease management.
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