Quiz

• Health behaviour


  Any activity undertaken by a person believing themselves to be healthy for the purposes of preventing disease or detecting it at an asymptomatic stage
• Many people engage in a variety of apparently health-related behaviours, such as exercise, for reasons other than disease prevention, including weight control, appearance, as a means of gaining social contacts and pleasure
• Health behaviour

  Behaviour performed by an individual, regardless of his/her perceived health status, with the purpose of protecting, promoting or maintaining his/her health
• Behavioural pathogens


  Behavioural practices thought to be damaging to health (e.g. smoking)
• Behavioural immunogens


  Behavioural practices considered to be health-protective (e.g. exercise)
• Health behaviour research generally adopts the view that health behaviour is that which is associated with an individual's health status, regardless of current health or motivations
• Risk


  A probability of an adverse outcome, or a factor that raises this probability
• Many risks are behavioural, although others are environmental, such as pollution or poverty
• What is considered health-risk behaviour has changed over the past century as medical understanding has developed
• There is evidence of health benefits of some behaviours considered generally as 'risky', such as sun or ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure
• Excessive and unprotected sun exposure is receiving growing attention in relation to skin cancer risk, a diagnosis which continues to rise in most European countries but which have stabilised in Australia and New Zealand
• Sunlight therapy may be offered in the treatment of skin disorders, and there is evidence of beneficial effects of vitamin D levels (which are raised with sunlight exposure) to reduced risk of several diseases including osteoporosis, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, and lower rates of several forms of cancer
• Longitudinal studies are necessary to test the nature and extent of associations between behaviour and health
• The 'Alameda seven' behaviours found to reduce subsequent development of disease and mortality

  • Sleeping 7-8 hours a night
  • Not smoking
  • Consuming no more than 1-2 alcoholic drinks per day
  • Getting regular exercise
  • Not eating between meals
  • Eating breakfast
  • Being no more than 10% overweight
• The benefits of performing these 'Alameda seven' activities were multiplicative and cumulative: not smoking as well as being active, conferred more than twice the benefit of only performing one of these behaviours, and the longer that 'immunogens' (health-protective behaviours) were engaged in, the greater the benefits to health and longevity
• Epidemiologists can clearly demonstrate that behaviour is predictive of mortality and that associations exist between specific behaviour and the onset of major illnesses, such as heart disease or cancer
• To prevent people from engaging in risk behaviour, we also need to understand the psychological and social factors that contribute to the uptake and maintenance of risk behaviour or the avoidance of health-enhancing or preventive behaviour
• Eight risk factors (alcohol use, tobacco use, high blood pressure, high body mass index, high cholesterol, high blood glucose, low fruit and vegetable intake, and physical inactivity) account for 61% of cardiovascular deaths and over three-quarters of ischaemic heart disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide
• Over 3 million childhood deaths occur every year in developing countries as a result of being underweight, while about half a million people die each year in North America and Europe as a result of an obesity-related disease
• Coronary heart disease was the underlying cause of death for 20,173 Australians in 2014, a further 11,965 Australians died from cerebrovascular disease and 4,300 Australians died from diabetes, the majority of which are considered 'preventable'