Four Ways That Poor Lifestyle Choices Can Affect Our Health In The Long Term

Or really, what do our lifestyle choices reflect about our health?

The world is getting sicker and sicker these days. Modern medicine is not equipped to cure a chronic illness situation, though it does attempt to partially address symptoms of that chronic situation.

Unfortunately, sometimes we’re born with it. DNA transcription can go awry at times, even as the sperm cell of the father meets up with the egg cell of the mother. If the information that is transcribed from the two parental cells hits a snag (through no fault of either parent), a child can be born with a faulty immune system by default, which immediately exposes them to immune problems such as autoimmune disorders or allergic reactions.

But for most humans, who were born as healthy babies with no significant health problems, how does their immunity deteriorate over the years?

What other implications does this lowered immunity have with their susceptibility towards developing chronic health conditions?

Unfortunately, the immune system is one of the most crucial parts of the body, and it does govern a fair bit of the biochemical pathways that are operating within the body. It does regulate the pro- and anti-inflammatory responses within the body.

There are many different pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines within the body, and the production process of each cytokine may or may not sequentially influence the production of other cytokines, so we’re looking at one big complex mess that we term as inflammation.

And of course, we can be living lifestyles that promote the production of more pro-inflammatory cytokines, or that can reduce the production of some of these pro-inflammatory cytokines.

It’s our choice, really.

1. Do we want to eat all the unhealthy, processed foods in excess, or cut them out from our diets completely?
2. Do we want to become so addicted to binge watching Netflix on late nights and (barely) survive on extended sleep deprivation?
3. Do we want to be so stressed when we work that we have no time to stop and smell the roses?
4. Do we want to have no time to properly exercise?

Because all these can contribute to an earlier dysregulation of the inflammatory signalling process, bringing with it a reduced immunity to even the common cold, or an earlier discovery of problems such as high blood sugar, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.

What we really do want to achieve is the Goldilocks principle — not too hot, not too cold, but somewhere that is “just right”. Of course, achieving “just right” isn’t the easiest thing ever when we’ve got so many factors that affect the “just right”.

Do we want to eat all the unhealthy, processed foods in excess, or cut them out from our diets completely?

The problem with food consumption is that we do have a limit on what we can eat — our stomachs are not bottomless pits at all.

If we make a choice to eat 500 grams of pure processed carbohydrates, that’s 500 grams of other healthy food that we would have to pass on to make space for those carbohydrates — there’s a trade-off right there.

And if we were to be filling ourselves with junk food most of the time, devoid of all the necessary vitamins and minerals that keep the cells in our body humming and running along… then what’s going to happen with regards to the operational capability of our cells?

Fundamentally, the idea of a disease is based on how far from optimal a cell is operating. We want our cells to be operating at their best all the time… any aberrant or sluggish behaviour is what the medical field would term as a “disease”.

And that’s what happens when we build up a nearly perpetual (and consistent) mild deficiency in some nutrients that support cellular function. This mild deficiency adds up over time and rears its ugly head at the routine medical checkup — partially because most people aren’t doing their best to eat right!

Do we want to become so addicted to binge watching Netflix on late nights and (barely) survive on extended sleep deprivation?

I’ll admit — television shows can be pretty addictive. If it’s not Netflix, it can be YouTube. There are so many options to watch so many different things these days.

But there are other reasons as to why people aren’t getting enough quality sleep these days. Part of that can be from stress; other reasons may include worries about what the future may hold, especially as we are coming out of a pandemic situation where so many things were thrown into a tumultuous uncertainty.

In the United States, chronic sleep deprivation is surprisingly common, where it is mentioned by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that

A third of US adults report that they usually get less than the recommended amount of sleep.

Insufficient quality sleep can lead to the adrenal glands releasing higher levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine (the stress hormones) into the blood.

These 2 hormones help to increase the activity of the pro-inflammatory nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) signalling pathway in the body, hence resulting in an intensified inflammation signalling.

Now, NF-κB regulates various aspects of immune responses within the body, so what can chronic sleep deprivation do to the body?

Chronic sleep deprivation upregulates NF-κB to produce more pro-inflammatory signalling cytokines, thus increasing the level of inflammation in the body. As a result, the immune system responses of a person with chronic sleep deprivation won’t be as optimal as they ought to be.

Do we want to be so stressed when we work that we have no time to stop and smell the roses?

There are so many things clamouring for our attention, including (but are not limited to):

1. Work, or climbing the corporate ladder.
2. Mortgage/home loan payments.
3. Rearing children.
4. Phone, computer, tablet and television screens.

During periods of high stress, the stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine are released into the blood by the adrenal glands. Chronically stressed people will be having chronically higher levels of these hormones in their blood — and this is exactly what we’re seeing from people who are experiencing chronic sleep deprivation too.

Unfortunately, we can see the emergence of a vicious cycle.

One who is stressed cannot sleep well.

One who cannot sleep well will get even more stressed.

In both situations, we’ll still be looking at the upregulation of the pro-inflammatory NF-κB pathway, which can bring about a higher dose of oxidative stress and chronic inflammation.

When we’re chronically stressed, it is easier for us to end up in a state of oxidative stress. Our cells do end up producing more hydrogen peroxide, and the hydrogen peroxide that is produced by cells that are near the hair follicles on our head can interfere with the activity of the melanocytes — the cells that are responsible for providing the necessary hair colour on our heads. We end up with white/gray hair as a result of that.

And this hydrogen peroxide can also attack the collagen proteins that provide structural support for our skin, which can result in structural collapses in various places. We see them as visible wrinkles on our skin.

Any wonder why chronically stressed people tend to be aging more rapidly now?

It’s all the fundamentals of biochemistry happening within the body.

Do we even have any time to properly exercise?

It’s all too common for one who is working hard and climbing the corporate ladder to either eschew or have no time/energy left to exercise sufficiently.

Unfortunately, exercise routines such as high intensity interval training (HIIT) does help to modulate the antioxidant status in a healthy human, so if we aren’t exercising enough… our antioxidant defenses may suffer.

HIIT is also known to activate the nuclear respiratory factor 2 (nrf2) pathway, which I have shown previously to be a key player in modulating the reduction/oxidation biochemical reactions within our body, especially with regards to the production of cellular glutathione, which then has a significant bearing on how our immune system can regulate the inflammatory signals within our body.

Thankfully, it’s not just one way that influences our overall health.

But rather, our lifestyle choices can be so complex that there isn’t a proper medical consensus on how our lifestyle can affect our health.

We’d have to be conscious of all the different ways that we can influence the quality of our life for a better way to age gracefully!

Joel Yong, Ph.D., is a biochemical engineer/scientist, an educator and a writer. He has authored 5 ebooks (available on Amazon.com in Kindle format) and co-authored 6 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed scientific journals. His main focus is on crafting strategies to support optimal biochemical functions in the human body at https://thethinkingscientist.substack.com.