Poor Lifestyle Choices and Health

One lyric by Metallica in their song Frantic says that "My lifestyle determines my death style." And while this is not the case all the time, the way you live can play a large part on the quality of life you have as well as the length of the life you have. Eating junk food, smoking, consuming alcohol, taking recreational drugs, abusing prescription drugs, having promiscuous or unprotected intercourse, can all lead us down the wrong wrong and significantly reduce the amount of quality years of life. They can lead to things like cancer, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and a lot of other conditions that you do not want to have.

So why do we sometimes choose unhealthy lifestyles? There are many factors, but here are the main ones:

Too many choices. It is not as if the decision to have a healthy lifestyle is as easy as choosing from Column A or Column B. Good Things and Bad Things are not purely black and white, and are rarely clearly labeled. There are so many different options available to us that fall in into the grey area that it can be rather obscure when consciously trying to make good decisions for your life. In order to avoid the negative consequences of a poor lifestyle, you will want to do your best to choose the things you know are good for you. Try to avoid or eliminate all of the things you know for sure are not good for you. If you smoke, stop. If you drink too much alcohol, stop. If you do not exercise at all, start. Cutting out the major things will make a substantial difference right away.

Too much information. With so many scientific studies showing that more and more things are bad for us, it is tempting to throw in the towel and just do whatever we feel like. There are things wrong with the meat we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the pets we have, and on and on. It can all be overwhelming and can lead to feelings of futility and defeatism that can lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices.

Too many manufactured goods. Today we do not even know what we are consuming. Food contains so many chemicals and industrial by-products that it makes it nearly impossible to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Even people that are trying earnestly to live right are finding it hard because there are not many purely natural, organic products available at reasonable prices.

Too much stress – When humans get stressed they do things to try and relieve that stress. Common stress remedies that contribute to an unhealthy lifestyle would be: eating in order to comfort yourself, smoking a cigarette in order to calm down, having a drink in order to calm down, or turning to recreational drugs or casual sex in order to mellow out .