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American Medicine
See more tips on preventing disease
Preventing disease by taking pills is easy. You pop the pills, and expect the benefits, and you’re done – no changes needed.
An equally important, but much more difficult way of preventing disease is by changing dangerous lifestyle behaviors. Examples of these behaviors are smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, drug abuse, overeating (which can result in obesity), and too little physical activity all produce harmful effects in your body.
Many patients can improve their behaviors just by telling themselves the familiar phrase, “just do it!” and the results are effective. However, most patients find that improvements in lifestyle habits are temporary, and they frequently lapse into bad behaviors again and again, with bad health as a result.
Understanding the triggers to these bad behaviors has become more sophisticated (Science 2012; 337: 1492). We respond to clues in our environment that produce bad behaviors 99% of the time. Bad behaviors become automatic, habitual, and difficult to break. This was recognized as early as 1899.
It has been found that altering your environment can improve behavior. Parking further from your place of work increases your exercise. Taking the stairs more frequently reduces obesity. Shopping in areas that have less stores selling alcohol, tobacco and junk food reduces bad dietary behavior. Using smaller plates reduces the quantity of food which you eat, preventing being overweight. Shopping for food when you are full, rather than when you are hungry results in better choices of food products. Using smaller glasses results in drinking less alcoholic beverages.
Reducing priming events may also be useful. Recording television programs and then playing them back without food, beverage and/or tobacco commercials reduces the likelihood that any commercials will be a stimulus to eat more snacks, drink more alcohol, or smoke more. Avoiding social situations where smoking by other people is common also reduces your smoking.
My tips for you are:
– Keep a diary of when you have poor health habits. Use this diary to guide reducing your exposure to bad priming events
– Discuss your bad habits with your physician and begin a program of reducing those bad health behaviors
– If your physician is not helping with controlling those habits, always consider getting a second opinion
For more information on how to use your physician more effectively to improve your behavior, increase your length of life, and reduce complications, see Surviving American Medicine.
