Lifestyle entails ways applied by groups, countries, and people and is formulated in certain geographic, political, economic, religious, and cultural texts. It comprises the traits of a region’s inhabitants in a special place and time. It includes daily functions and behaviors of people in activities, jobs, diet, and fun.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 60% of connected aspects of quality of life and personal health are linked to lifestyle. Millions of individuals follow an unhealthy lifestyle. Thus, they encounter disease, disability, and death. Issues such as metabolic diseases, skeletal and joint problems, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and overweight, among others, can be contributed by an unhealthy lifestyle. The connection between health and lifestyle ought to be highly considered.

Currently, wide changes have happened in all people’s lives. Unhealthy diet, malnutrition, alcohol consumption, smoking, stress, drug abuse, etc., are unhealthy lifestyle presentations that people are used to. Moreover, people are faced with new challenges such as emerging technologies in IT, e.g., the internet plus virtual communication networks that have made the world to be a major challenge that is threatening the mental and physical health of people. The challenge tends to be the misuse and overuse of technology.

Thus, according to previous and current studies, it can be concluded that lifestyle has a considerable impact on the mental and physical health of people.

Variables of lifestyle that affect health 

Lifestyle variables that influence health can get categorized into:

1. Diet and Body Mass Index: Diet tends to be the biggest lifestyle factor and has a positive and direct connection with health. Poor diet plus its consequences such as obesity is the most prevalent health issue in urban communities. An unhealthy lifestyle may be gauged by BMI. Besides, the urban lifestyle results in the nutrition issues such as using poor foods and fast foods, leading to an increase in conditions such as cardiovascular diseases.

2. Exercise: For treating overall health issues, exercise is incorporated into a lifestyle. Constant exercise together with a healthy diet improves health. Numerous studies emphasize the link of a dynamic lifestyle with pleasure.

3. Sexual Behavior: Usual sexual relation is crucial in a healthy life. Sex relation dysfunction is an issue in most communities or societies and carries a considerable impact on psychological and physical health. Dysfunctional sex relations can lead to multiple family issues or sex-linked diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

4. Sleep: A key base of healthy life tends to be sleep since it can’t be separated from one’s life. Sleep disorders are a result of several psychological, social, economic plus healthy impacts. Lifestyle may influence sleep, whereas sleep influences physical and mental health.

5. Substance abuse: Addiction gets taken as an unhealthy lifestyle. Tobacco use and smoking plus other substance use may cause numerous problems; asthma, cardiovascular disease, brain injury, and cancer. 

6. Medication abuse: It is a prevalent form of utilizing medication and it gets considered one of the most common unhealthy lifestyles. Unhealthy conducts in using medication include self-treatment, using medications without a prescription, shared medication, prescribing excess drugs, unnecessary drugs, prescribing a huge number of each drug, disregard for adverse effects of medications, and not clarifying the effects of medications, among others.

7. Application of modern technologies: developed and advanced technology tends to facilitate the lives of people. Technology misuse may lead to unpleasant impacts, for instance, computer use plus other services for a long duration may impact your sleep pattern, which may lead to sleep disorders.

8. Recreation: Leisure time is a lifestyle sub-factor. Ignoring leisure may result in negative impacts. With unhealthy leisure and disorganized planning, people put their health in danger.

9. Study: study tends to be the soul’s exercise. Putting study as an aspect of lifestyle may contribute to more mental and physical health problems, for instance, dementia prevalence.