Health
Here’s How to Prevent Infectious Diseases in Five Steps.
“Infectious diseases kill around 17 million people a year.”
Significance of infection diseases globally
According to World Health Organization (WHO), since 1996, around 17 million people have died from infectious diseases each year.
More importantly, infectious diseases are in the top ten list of WHO causing death. These diseases affect our health and life span.
According to government stats, in Australia, where I live, between the years 2000 and 2018, around 99,000 deaths were attributed to “communicable diseases”.
The vast majority of infectious diseases, approximately 89% of the deaths, caused by infections were attributed to non-notifiable diseases. The most common ones were lower respiratory infections caused by various bacteria and viruses.
Compared to global settings, this number might look small. However, this figure is still substantial considering the population of only 25 million.
Even though death rates in Australia from infectious diseases are relatively lower than in those under-developed countries, it is still concerning for citizens.
While personal responsibility is a critical prevention approach, the socioeconomic development of nations plays a vital role in dealing with infectious diseases. For example, more people die from infectious diseases in underdeveloped countries.
Infectious diseases are close to my heart as I had a few of them in my younger years and lost several friends, family members, and colleagues due to these diseases.
Therefore, I aim to raise awareness and provide practical tips to prevent them. Infectious diseases directly or indirectly impact both our physical and mental health.
However, first, I’d like to provide a brief background to understand these diseases, especially root causes, symptoms, and treatment options, before touching on the prevention approaches.
What are infectious diseases?
Living microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi are the major causes of infectious diseases.
Not all of these organisms are harmful to the human body. In fact, some of them are valuable for our immune system as our gut is full of them.
Some harmful microorganisms manifest in specific environmental and internal conditions, particularly when our immune system is compromised. However, our immune system is well equipped to keep these organisms under control in normal conditions.
We get infectious diseases in various ways.
The most common ones are from one person to another via close contact, such as via coughs and blood, from animals to humans from being bitten or touching them, and even from mothers to their unborn children, such as via breastfeeding.
The riskiest animals, in addition to wild animals, are our beloved pets, mosquitoes, lice, and fleas. These pests usually occur due to a lack of hygiene. Mosquitoes cause severe outbreaks as they carry malaria parasites and viruses such as West Nile.
Various infectious diseases have different symptoms. However, common symptoms are coughs, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain, and dizziness. More importantly, some infectious diseases are contagious.
Some infectious diseases, fortunately, don’t create complications. However, a few of them, such as AIDS and pneumonia, can develop severe health situations in the long term.
In addition, some infectious diseases might also cause cancers. For example, there is mention of the association of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C to liver cancer in the medical literature.
In addition, when I had Helicobacter pylori years ago, my doctor said it might cause ulcers in my stomach.
After this brief background, let me introduce a few tips. These are broad categories. I believe following these tips might decrease the risks of getting infectious diseases.
Five Tips to Prevent Infectious Diseases
1 — Personal Hygiene
Our behavior plays a critical role in our health. For example, personal hygiene is an essential behavior for having good health.
Our hands are one of the reasons we catch some organisms causing infectious diseases. Therefore, a critical hygiene factor is regularly washing our hands after using the toilet, touching people or animals, and preparing food.
In addition, touching our eyes, nose, and mouth before washing our hands can quickly cause harmful organisms to enter our bodies.
2 — Clean Eating, Drinking, Breathing
Food and beverages are common causes of catching harmful organisms leading to infectious diseases. Cooking our food can significantly reduce the number of harmful microorganisms.
Using a food thermometer to check for food cooked well can be helpful. For example, undercooked poultry caused issues for my friends.
Sometimes we eat leftovers, but we need to keep them in the fridge. Eating fresh food is vital as stale food can have harmful organisms. Protecting our food in the refrigerator can reduce risks.
We need to be extra careful to eat only in clean places that we trust when eating out. Food sold in uncontrolled and unregulated environments, such as sold in the streets in some countries, can be hazardous.
I witnessed some friends going overseas and eating food sold in the streets with severe infectious diseases.
Water is also critical for our health. Therefore, ensuring our water is clean and, if not sure, boiling and purifying the water can be helpful to prevent harmful organisms from entering the body.
In addition, air quality is also essential to prevent infectious diseases in polluted countries.
Therefore, besides refraining from air pollution, breathing air in contaminated environments, especially indoors with people carrying contagious diseases, can help prevent contamination.
Using protective masks and implementing air-cleaning devices indoors can be effective prevention strategies.
3 — Improving Immunity
It is impossible to eradicate all harmful organisms in our life. We grew and evolved with viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites throughout human history. The best approach is to strengthen our defense systems.
Our immune system is the central part of the human defense system protecting us from the harmful effects of these organisms and dealing with infectious diseases.
In addition, initiating autophagy and maintaining homeostasis can be valuable in improving our immune system.
While medication and immunization might be needed for certain conditions, empowering our immune system usually keeps us healthy. I introduced human defense systems in this article.
4 — Medications and Vaccinations
Healthcare professionals use medications for both treating and preventing infectious diseases. As a result, medicine saves the lives of millions of people from the harmful effects of contagious diseases.
However, some medications, such as antibiotics, if overused by patients, can cause resistance problems. So, their effectiveness in dealing with bacteria can diminish.
Therefore, caring healthcare professionals do not recommend the unnecessary use of antibiotics. Instead, we should only use them when needed and prescribed by our physicians.
Immunizations, especially in childhood and later in life, to protect from new viruses and bacteria can prevent us from catching infectious diseases. In addition, vaccines provide immunity against the harmful effects of those organisms.
5 — Safe Sex
Sexually transmitted diseases cause suffering physically and mentally. Some STDs, such as the HIV turning into AIDS, killed millions of people. Fortunately, some recent medical solutions can reduce the rate of deaths from HIV.
Some STDs are minor and can be easily treated with antibiotics. However, if untreated, some of them can cause serious health issues such as Syphilis, causing neurological problems at advanced stages.
When any STD symptoms occur or when we are worried about an incident, getting a check-up can be beneficial to get treated timely.
Safe sex is a comprehensive issue beyond the scope of this article. However, awareness of safe sex for preventing infectious diseases is crucial. In addition, not sharing toothbrushes, combs, and shaving utensils can be preventative.
Conclusions
Treatment of infectious disease is essential, but prevention is also critical. Improving our immune system and initiating autophagy by self-eating harmful microorganisms in the body can be preventative approaches.
In addition, notifying contagious diseases our family members, friends, colleagues, and government departments is necessary. Many countries use surveillance processes to keep infectious diseases under control.
Therefore, they ask citizens to notify health authorities to monitor and address risks as contagious diseases are a public health concern.
In some countries, workplaces and schools have stringent rules for protecting employees and students. For example, they don’t allow people to work or go to school when they have noticeable sickness symptoms such as runny nose, coughing, fever, diarrhea, or vomiting.
In addition to preventing ourselves by the measures I mentioned, we also have other obligations.
Since infections can spread very quickly, following advice from healthcare professionals, government regulations, and workplace and school policies are essential to prevent the spread of diseases.
The Covid virus causes infectious diseases affecting millions of people globally. Unfortunately, a few months ago, my partner got infected with the Covid virus at her workplace, as I mentioned in this article.
However, since we followed the rules recommended by healthcare professionals and the government, none of us in the family got infected.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Hormonal Effects of the Covid-19 Virus
Disclaimer: Please note that this post does not include health or professional advice. I documented my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives only to provide information and create awareness.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters.
ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients.
Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on cellular, mitochondrial, metabolic, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
You are welcome to join my publications on Medium as a writer by sending a request via this link. 21K writers contribute to my publications. You may join Medium with my referral link to enjoy unlimited content.
