Eat healthy, exercise to avoid diseases

LIFESTYLE disease is linked with and often caused by the way people live their lives.
In Papua New Guinea, lifestyle diseases affect everyone in urban and rural areas.
The trend has inevitable effects in the lives of many people.
Lifestyle diseases are non-communicable diseases.
They are caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, alcohol consumption, drugs abuse, smoking, which lead to heart disease, stroke, obesity, type II diabetes and Lung cancer.
And diseases that increase in frequency as countries become more industrialised and people live longer can include Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, atherosclerosis, asthma, cancer, chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, type II diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney failure, osteoporosis, polycystic ovarian disease, stroke, depression, obesity and vascular dementia.
Some people define lifestyle diseases as diseases of longevity, diseases of civilisation or diseases of affluence.
Studies suggest that certain diseases such as diabetes, dental caries and asthma, appear at greater rates in young populations living in the western way. Though Papua New Guinea is a developing nation, lifestyles disease seem to have no care.
Poor lifestyles and unhealthy leaving have been the norm in many parts of PNG and many people are more prone to diseases that are associated with it.
People living in settlements are vulnerable to lifestyle diseases due to unhealthy sanitation and poor accommodations.
For those people living in better housing with excess to proper sanitations are no exceptions.
Children and adults who are addicted to eating junk food and fatty food with no exercise are prone to lifestyle diseases.
As an individual, the onus is in your hands to take care of your health or deteriorate yourself.
As the famous phrase that says; “your health is your wealth”.
Take care of yourself by eating properly and do regular exercise to avoid live style diseases.
Let’s make PNG a prosperous, healthy and wealthy nation.

Misack Ruri,
UPNG