1. What is a lifestyle disease?

A lifestyle disease is one which appears in societies where people live long and have individualized their lifestyle patterns. Evidently, a lifestyle disease is always an outcome of the patient's lifestyle and is known to become a part of the person's life sooner or later, since it is a common occurrence in the society and amongst people with similar lifestyles. Diet also plays an important role in occurrence of a lifestyle disease.

2. Most common lifestyle diseases?

Commonly occurring lifestyle diseases are arthritis, asthma, Alzheimer's disease, artherosclerosis, chronic liver disease, liver cirrhosis, cancer, obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, renal failure, type 2 diabetes, depression, obesity, stroke, and metabolic syndromes.

3. Risk factors for lifestyle diseases?

Main risk factors that lead to lifestyle diseases are addictive habits like smoking, drinking and drug abuse. Most lifestyle diseases reduce life span and cause extreme social and mental discomfort to the friends and family of the patient. Visits to special facilities like home care, nursing homes and clinics will increase with time. Other risk factors include lack of co-operation from patients, especially in cases of addiction to drugs, alcohol or cigarettes, extreme depression or suicidal tendencies due to the disease and societal isolation.

4. Complications of Lifestyle diseases?

Occurrence of two or more major diseases in accompaniment with a lifestyle disease can lead to extreme complications that require hospitalization and trained care and operation. Further on, too many complications like falls, stroke or cardiac arrest may even lead to death. Lack of medical supervision and care is therefore, never to happen with patients of lifestyle diseases listed above.

5. Can healthy lifestyle prevent lifestyle diseases?

Yes, healthy lifestyle prevents lifestyle diseases to a great extent. Most people following a healthy lifestyle are able to fight with environmental and societal impacts of unhealthy lifestyle like pollution and passive smoking. Therefore, in spite of all odds, they are able to enjoy health for a longer period of time than expected.