disadvantages of healthy lifestyle essay

Pros and Cons for Healthy Food Choices

Eating healthy can help you sustain wellness, achieve longevity and prevent chronic diseases that are costly to treat. Despite public health promotion to eat healthy foods, only 23 percent of Americans consume the daily recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, according to the 2010 Annual Status Report of the National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council. Healthy food choices abound in most cities, yet they can be hard to find in restaurants and may be perceived to be costlier than processed foods.

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Pro: Promotes Health

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Consuming healthy foods can improve your overall health. Healthy foods are whole, organically grown without pesticides, unprocessed and include fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, grains and olive and vegetable oils. Healthy foods for people who eat animal products include moderate amounts of low-fat dairy and cold water, fatty fish, such as salmon and light tuna and low amounts of lean meat and poultry. These foods may promote health and increase your longevity. Healthy food choices include products that contain calcium for bone growth, antioxidants to slow down the aging process and healthy fats to maintain cellular and cardiovascular health.

Pro: Reduces Risk of Disease

Healthy foods reduce your risk of chronic diseases. Low glycemic foods, such as barley, grapefruits and chickpeas, help you control blood sugar levels and may reduce your risk of diabetes and complications, such as nerve damage. Healthy fats, such as monounsaturated fatty acids from olive oil and omega-3 fatty acids from walnuts and fish, may reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.Fruits and vegetables contain an abundance of antioxidants, which may reduce your risk of cancer. Dairy and soy foods contain calcium, which can reduce your risk of osteoporosis.

Con: Not Always Easy to Find

Healthy food choices are not always easy to find, particularly at restaurants. Many fast food restaurants cook with trans fats, industrial processed hydrogenated vegetable oils that can increase your risk of heart disease. Many of the food choices on restaurant menus include foods with high amounts of calories, sodium and saturated fat. To eat healthy, order a salad with dressing on the side.

A common perception among people who do not shop at health food stores is that health foods are more expensive than similar products in mainstream grocery stores. The truth is that many gourmet brands of health foods are costly, yet there are less-expensive health food brands of products. Buying organic produce can be expensive, but can be less costly when grown locally. Eating healthier, sometimes costlier foods, may help you save more tomorrow on not having to pay for health care expenses from treating chronic diseases that may result from eating unhealthy foods. Research at Harvard School of Public Health published in the "Journal of the American College of Nutrition" in 2008 demonstrates that people who are introduced to healthy foods and subsidized 20 percent of the cost increased their consumption of healthy foods after the subsidy was removed.

• Public Health Council: 2010 Annual Status Report
• Harvard School of Public Health: Mediterranean Diet
• Linus Pauling Institute: Glycemic Index
• MayoClinic.com: Dietary Fats
• National Cancer Institute: Antioxidants and Cancer Prevention: Fact Sheet
• University of Maryland Medical Center: Calcium
• University of Maryland Medical Center: Trans Fats 101
• "Journal of the American College of Nutrition"; K.B. Michaels, et al.; Feb. 27, 2008

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 06 September 2021

Unhealthy lifestyles, environment, well-being and health capability in rural neighbourhoods: a community-based cross-sectional study

• Anabela Marisa Azul   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3295-1284 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Ricardo Almendra 4 , 5 ,
• Marta Quatorze 6 ,
• Adriana Loureiro 4 ,
• Flávio Reis 2 , 6 , 7 , 8 ,
• Rui Tavares 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Anabela Mota-Pinto 6 , 9 ,
• António Cunha 10 , 11 ,
• Luís Rama 12 ,
• João Oliveira Malva 2 , 6 , 7 , 11 ,
• Paula Santana 4 , 5 ,
• João Ramalho-Santos 1 , 2 , 13 &

HeaLIQs4Cities consortium

BMC Public Health volume  21 , Article number:  1628 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Non-communicable diseases are a leading cause of health loss worldwide, in part due to unhealthy lifestyles. Metabolic-based diseases are rising with an unhealthy body-mass index (BMI) in rural areas as the main risk factor in adults, which may be amplified by wider determinants of health. Changes in rural environments reflect the need of better understanding the factors affecting the self-ability for making balanced decisions. We assessed whether unhealthy lifestyles and environment in rural neighbourhoods are reflected into metabolic risks and health capability.

We conducted a community-based cross-sectional study in 15 Portuguese rural neighbourhoods to describe individuals’ health functioning condition and to characterize the community environment. We followed a qualitatively driven mixed-method design to gather information about evidence-based data, lifestyles and neighbourhood satisfaction (incorporated in eVida technology), within a random sample of 270 individuals, and in-depth interviews to 107 individuals, to uncover whether environment influence the ability for improving or pursuing heath and well-being.

Men showed to have a 75% higher probability of being overweight than women ( p -value = 0.0954); and the reporting of health loss risks was higher in women (RR: 1.48; p -value = 0.122), individuals with larger waist circumference (RR: 2.21; IC: 1.19; 4.27), overweight and obesity (RR: 1.38; p -value = 0.293) and aged over 75 years (RR: 1.78; p -value = 0.235; when compared with participants under 40 years old). Metabolic risks were more associated to BMI and physical activity than diet (or sleeping habits). Overall, metabolic risk linked to BMI was higher in small villages than in municipalities. Seven dimensions, economic development, built (and natural) environment, social network, health care, demography, active lifestyles, and mobility, reflected the self-perceptions in place affecting the individual ability to make healthy choices. Qualitative data exposed asymmetries in surrounding environments among neighbourhoods and uncovered the natural environment and natural resources specifies as the main value of rural well-being.

Conclusions

Metabolic risk factors reflect unhealthy lifestyles and can be associated with environment contextual-dependent circumstances. People-centred approaches highlight wider socioeconomic and (natural) environmental determinants reflecting health needs, health expectations and health capability. Our community-based program and cross-disciplinary research provides insights that may improve health-promoting changes in rural neighbourhoods.

Peer Review reports

Non-communicable diseases (NCD) are the leading causes of health loss globally, accounting for 91% of deaths and almost 87% of disability-adjusted-life-years (DALYs) in Europe [ 1 ], in part due to unhealthy diets and lifestyles [ 2 , 3 ]. A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease [ 4 ], undertaken by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Institute for Health, Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) highlight three metabolic risks among the five leading risks of DALYs worldwide: i) high systolic blood pressure (SBP), ii) high fasting plasma glucose and iii) body-mass index (BMI). In parallel, in 2019, a large-scale study including more than 112 million adults across urban and rural neighbourhoods estimated that BMI increased 2.1 kg/m 2 in both women and men in rural neighbourhoods over the past three decades; suggesting that the rising of rural BMI is currently the main health risk factor in adults [ 5 ].

Health loss risks in rural neighbourhoods may be amplified by wider determinants of health and well-being such as the geographic and historical factors across economic and socio-cultural characteristics [ 6 ]. Places are living organisms that produce dynamics, generate environments and create societies [ 7 , 8 ] They are a set of multiple, complex and overlapping environments that support life (e.g., home, social relationships, communities and neighbourhoods) [ 9 ]. The exposure to positive or negative environments, that occur in particular geographic locations, influence human health and well-being throughout the course of life [ 10 , 11 ]. Problems related with built, connective, and relational space present themselves when spatial planning and development models cannot be adjusted in face of a changing landscape, for instance, ageing phenomena [ 12 ]. A growing elderly population accentuates the ability to pursue health in place due to a combination of physical–cognitive and functional–social and psychological fragility [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].

Communities have a deep understanding of their surrounding environments enabling them to better assess external factors [ 13 , 14 ] impacting health and the ability to make healthy choices. Comprehensive theories of health and social justice [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ] intersect individual-level data and broader structural and environmental circumstances, for mapping the conditions that reflect health needs, health expectations and health capability gaps at both individual and community levels. In this way, Ruger’ health capability mode of 2010 [ 18 ] includes the capability to reduce/prevent the exposure to metabolic risks factors, to reduce DALYs and early mortality, to pursue healthy lifestyles, or to gain health-related knowledge, which is viewed both as an end for individuals (intrinsic motivation) but also as a driving force for encouraging changes at the community level, e.g., socioeconomic development, built and natural environment, or social cohesion, particularly in rural areas [ 20 ].

Self-management of NCD remains poorly implemented in rural neighbourhoods despite self-adherence to healthy lifestyles evidence reflected in self-ability to make balanced decisions [ 21 , 22 ]. The community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a wide-ranging methodological approach that concedes the possibility of exploring gaps between what is expected and what is afforded and its interconnections and interdependencies [ 23 ], while evidence-based data can be helpful for assessing an individual’s health functionality. Therefore, we propose a qualitatively driven mixed-method design to assess unhealthy lifestyles of people living in rural neighbourhoods, which includes gathering evidence-based data about metabolic risks and health functionality and studying broader contextual determinants of health and well-being associated to place and neighbourhood. We ultimate expect to uncover health and well-being drivers in rural neighbourhoods, and determine whether community circumstances influence health capability at both the individual and community-level.

Study area, design and community setting

The cross-sectional study was conducted in 15 rural neighbourhoods from six municipalities in the Centre region of Portugal (Fig.  1 ), aiming at 1) assessing evidence-based data and describing lifestyles, 2) examining determinants of health and well-being in rural neighbourhoods, and 3) discuss how individuals’ conditions and population’ circumstances can contribute with a better understanding to improve health capability in rural neighbourhoods.

Location of rural neighbourhoods; basemap is provided by ESRI, available as part of the mapping platform ArcGIS Online

The selection of the rural neighbourhoods of the “ Terras de Sicó ” ( Lands of Sicó ) network (Sicó-network) was drawn on a CBPR approach. Given possible differences at the administrative level, which could influence local practices, we considered the three relevant levels of territory administrative structure: small villages, parish councils, and municipalities seats (hereinafter referred as municipality) (Fig. 1 ). According to the Portuguese National Statistics Institute, in 2011, 3879 individuals were living in the 15 rural neighbourhoods (Table  1 ), one third of the population was older than 64 years and with a high rate of limited literacy (e.g., the proportion of individuals that do not know how to read is almost the same as individuals with higher education); which are common characteristics in Portuguese rural areas [ 24 ].

The study encompasses a qualitatively driven mixed-method design, that is, simultaneously, qualitative (QUAL; inductive theoretical drive) and quantitative (quan): QUAL+quan [ 25 ]: quan to describe and examine individuals’ health functioning condition (evidence-based data and lifestyles); QUAL to document how individuals experience their neighbourhood in terms of health and well-being [ 26 ], and to better understand which local circumstances influence the ability to adopt healthier lifestyles and to pursue health [ 18 ].

Our CBPR approach involved the local representatives from the Sicó-network ( n  = 20; among policymakers, local community members and stakeholders); advanced training students and young professionals ( n  = 13), from biomedical sciences, medicine and sports sciences; a trans-disciplinary research and innovation team ( n  = 18) involving researchers from life sciences, medical and health sciences, and social sciences, and developers of advanced technology for health monitoring and e-health services, including two international members of the HeaLIQs consortium and two members of the consortium Ageing@Coimbra. Two local consolidation meetings with local representatives of the Terras de Sicó network and the research and innovation team, held in two municipalities, Penela (May 28, 2019) and Alvaiázere (June 11, 2019), created the bases of the CBPR approach, and a roadmap for local itineraries and local community engagement. Triangulation between local representatives and researchers regarding the CBPR approach contributed to: better characterizing the demography in the 15 neighbourhoods; co-designing the community program adapted to each neighbourhood; co-constructing a health communication strategy and tailored healthy lifestyles-related messages for older adults with limited literacy; discussing the theoretical background [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ] and the QUAL+quan methodology connecting with a questionnaire [ 27 ] incorporated in pre-existing eVida technology [ 28 ]; and training volunteer students and young professionals to operationalize translational research and participatory approaches with community engagement in neighbourhoods. Local representatives collaborated actively in the dissemination of the program via national/regional media (i.e., newspapers, radio, television and flyers), social media (i.e., Facebook) and institutional websites (e.g., Sicó-network, municipalities, local stakeholders and university). Overall, the design took about 9 months, from January to September 2019.

Mobile healthy living room

The community program took place in a mobile Healthy Living Room (mHLR) (Fig.  2 ), designed as a mobile community service, to reach isolated rural neighbourhoods with lower access to health care facilities and awareness about healthy lifestyles. The mHLR was equipped with a healthy lifestyle assessment toolkit, which comprises medical devices and a questionnaire [ 27 ] incorporated in eVida technology. eVida is a tablet-based application centred on the input of the questionnaires (as discussed in detail below), provides a personalized summary of putative health risks associated with individual characteristics and behaviours [ 28 ].

Community program intervention design; credits: the research team

The community intervention involved 1) the assessment of evidence-based data (e.g., BMI, waist circumference, and self-assessment of illnesses or chronic diseases, medication and sleep habits), 2) lifestyle characterization (e.g., diet, active lifestyles, quality of life and self-assessment of health and well-being), 3) demographic information (i.e., sex, age, employment status and level of education), complemented with 4) the self-assessment of neighbourhood satisfaction, all incorporated in eVida technology, and 5) the individual in-depth interview about the contexts in place to pursue good health in the neighbourhood. Each participant was accompanied by a trained team member and community intervention included two to four team members and four to six students/young professionals, depending on the neighbourhoods’ population.

At the end, participants received the results of the eVida questionnaire and prevention recommendations in an individualised report as well as short cartoon-like active healthy lifestyles messages, about diet, physical activity, social cohesion, and mental health and well-being.

This research was part of a collaborative European research project, Healthy Lifestyle Innovation Quarters for Cities and Citizens (HeaLIQs4Cities), funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology for Health (EIT Health), that unite researchers and neighbourhoods from Coimbra (Portugal), Groningen (The Netherlands) and Copenhagen (Denmark), around the concept of health capability and drivers of health and well-being. Among the stakeholders, the consortium Ageing@Coimbra represents a reference site in Centro region of Portugal within the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA), that is founded on a quadruple helix-based innovation model for improving active and healthy ageing in Europe [ 28 ].

Data collection

One dimension of the data aimed at collecting evidence-based data, lifestyles and self-assessment of neighbourhood satisfaction incorporated in eVida, as mentioned above, while another dimension of the data aspired at documenting the contexts in place influencing the ability to pursue health and well-being in the neighbourhood. The weight and waist circumference were measured and BMI assessed; the factors associated with illnesses or chronic diseases, medication, and sleep habits were self-reported. The quality of life followed EQ-5D-5L questionnaire: mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression (each dimension is rated on scale with 5 levels: no problems, slight problems, moderate problems, severe problems and extreme problems). We also considered two additional dimensions of self-assessment of health and well-being of ‘quality of life’ (with 5 levels, strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, strongly agree) and ‘health condition’ (with 5 levels, very good, good, reasonable, bad, very bad). Regarding the description of lifestyles, diet was categorized per food groups per day and per week (following 5 levels in the Likert scale).

Qualitative research advances the possibilities of a deeper understanding of people’s perceptions and expectations and exploring unique topics within the research aims. For that purpose, we conducted the open-ended question in an in-depth interview: “ What would you change in your neighbourhood to have a healthier life? ”. To reduce eventual desirability bias, participants were ensured prior the eVida questionnaire that were no right or wrong responses and a privacy environment was ensured during the interview; the eVida and interview took in between 45 to 60 min.

Through eVida, information was collected on a random sample of 270 individuals living in rural neighbourhoods from the Sicó-network, considering the dimension and location of the neighbourhood (small villages, parish council and municipalities), constituting a sample with a margin of error of 5.75% and confidence level of 95%. The sample size for the interviews was determined by applying the saturation point criteria, and was stopped after 107 testimonials were collected. This study design was considered the most appropriate way to describe individuals’ lifestyles and communities’ environments. The collection of QUAL+quan data was performed by researchers with background on life sciences, medical and health sciences, and social sciences; the CBPR approach from the very early stages revealed to be determinant for the research methodology and outcomes. Furthermore, the first day of intervention was followed by a preliminary assessment and discussion by the advanced training students (and young professionals) and the team, in order to identify personal bias, optimize the use of eVida and the interview, and minimize any other form of unintended coercion with participants. Data collection was conducted between September 4 and 23, 2019.

Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Centre Regional Health Administration of Portugal: Reference 91/2019. Participants were required to be 18 years or older and were asked to sign a written informed consent before initiating the community intervention. At the end, participants received a bag with the individualised report and the short cartoon-like active healthy lifestyles messages, about diet, physical activity, social cohesion, and mental health and well-being.

Data analysis

Testimonies were documented in writing, and then transcribed and translated to English. Each participant was linked the age, sex and municipality council in order to present direct quotations (e.g., Female, 68, Small Village, Pombalinho 610). The first four authors performed an independent analysis in all testimonies developing a parallel codification on drivers of health and well-being at community level in the rural neighbourhoods. After several collective discussions rounds (over a period of 3 months), seven consensual dimensions were identified a priori: economic development, built environment, social network, health care, demography, active lifestyles and mobility. The a priori themes were used to code the qualitative data in which subtopics were built upon [ 29 ].

All testimonies were imported to MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020 version 20.0.0 (Berlin, Germany: VERBI Software GmbH) for coding and analysis. The coding was done in three stages. In the first stage, the testimonies were coded based on the selected dimensions. In a second stage of coding, the resulting identification of sub-topics for each of the 7 dimensions based on mention frequency, and the identification of predominant topics, in both individual accounts and different neighbourhoods, was carried out independently across researchers. Any new codes were consensually debated during regular team meetings. In the third stage, all testimonies were coded once more by applying the final coding scheme. All coded testimonies were evaluated for emerging topics. We used several strategies to ensure quality in data coding. The composition of coding pairs was changed after 10 to 15 testimonies to reduce possible systematic bias. Using this approach, we were able to examine the in situ community needs in the 15 rural neighbourhoods. We also documented the clear individual positive perceptions of living in rural neighbourhoods: i) in terms of healthy living and well-being; ii) the different ways of describing and explaining lifestyles and daily habits; iii) the multiples ways of living and be engaged with community environment; iv) access to health care and health services.

Authors involved in the analyses maintained the explanatory map of the CBPR process from the research goals to data collection and analysis. The number and the frequency of subjects mentioned by participants in different topics support the reliability and credibility of our findings. We also used the lexical search on the MAXQDA program for key codes, to identify the frequency and number of mentions for consistency in participants’ responses.

To supplement the qualitative analysis, binomial logistic regression models were applied: BMI (classified in two categories: 1. overweight and obesity and 2. normal and low weight), waist circumference (classified in two categories: 1. and 2.), self-assessed health status (classified in two categories: 1. good and very good and 2. less than good), were assessed as dependent variables and sex, age (continuous), place of residence (classified in the three classes: 1. small villages, 2. parish councils and 3. municipalities), as independent.

Demographic characteristics

Two hundred seventy people participated (84 in small villages, 112 in parish councils and 74 in municipalities). Women made up a larger proportion of the participants (63%) in the three levels (Table 1 ). The median age was 69 years (1st quartile: 58 years; 3rd quartile: 77 years), with 78% of the participants above 55 years of age. Most of the participants were retired (64%), with a higher proportion (77%) in small villages. The level of education varied along the neighbourhoods, with a small proportion (9%) having receiving higher education (4 and 3% in small villages and parish councils, and 24% in municipalities); the largest share of participants completed the first two grades of basic education (69%), and 14% did not receiving primary education (29, 9 and 7% in small villages, parish councils and municipalities, respectively).

Individual health functionality

The proportion of participants with normal BMI was substantially lower above 55 years of age, with a higher proportion of women presenting normal BMI than men for the participants aged 55 to 74 years (Additional file  1 : Table S1). The proportion of participants with obesity was slightly higher in women aged 55 to 74 years and lower in the other range of ages (< 54 years, > 75 years). In terms of obesity data by rural neighbourhood, the proportion of participants with obesity was lower in municipalities (32%) than in small villages (38%) and parish councils (45%). For the participants aged 55 to 74 years (Fig.  3 a), excess weight was lower in women in all types of neighbourhoods (48 and 54% in small village; 27 and 55% in parish councils; 29 and 50% in municipalities; respectively); obesity was higher in men in municipalities (43 and 38%, respectively). Overall, men had a 75% higher probability of being overweight than women ( p -value: 0.0954), while waist circumference measurements reflected obesity over age, being consistently higher in participants > 75 years of age; the risk of having high waist circumference was 2.45 (IC: 1.1; 5.7) times higher in individuals living in small villages than in municipalities.

Evidence-based data by rural neighbourhood for participants aged 55 to 74 years

NCD risks associated to chronic diseases were reported by 25% of the participants aged 55 to 74 years (Fig. 3 b) including: (i) heart disease (heart failure, ischemia or angina, arrhythmia) was declared by 13% (17% in small villages, 15% in parish councils and 8% in municipalities); (ii) peripheral vascular disease (problems in arteries of the legs and feet, or varicose veins) was mentioned by 8% (7% in small villages, 8% in parish councils and 8% in municipalities); and (iii) respiratory disease (asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) was declared by 4% (7% in small villages and 4% in parish councils) (the information for all participants is presented in supplementary Table S1 ). The lowest prevalence of medication was documented in parish councils (33%) and municipalities (32%) (Additional file 1 : Table S1); overall, a substantial proportion of the participants (59%) reported were taking 2–5 medications a day, and a lower proportion (16%) reported taking > 5 medications a day.

Sleeping habits ranged from ≥7 h for 38% of the individuals and less than 5 hours for 17% of the individuals, with a clear trend of more sleeping hours in individuals living in municipalities (Additional file 1 : Table S1). Sleep without interruption was reported by 48% of the individuals, with higher prevalence (55%) in individuals living in municipalities. Consistently with sleeping hours, 35% of the individuals considered having poor sleep quality (41, 33 and 32%, in small villages, parish councils and municipalities, respectively; supplementary Table S1 ).

Self-rated health condition ranged from good (47%) to reasonable (42%), with little differences in neighbourhoods. About 5% of participants referred having very good health, consistently in all neighbourhoods, contrasting with the 5% of participants that mentioned having bad health, with lower incidence in municipalities (3%). Severe or extreme pain was reported by 6 and 1% of the individuals, respectively, with higher incidence from participants living in small villages. In terms of self-rated well-being, a large proportion of participants (74%) reported having a good quality of life, with 25% of the individuals attributing the highest score (18% living in small villages, 30% in parish council and 26% in municipalities). Across data, participants with higher waist circumference had a 2.21 (IC: 1.19; 4.27) higher probability of presenting a poor self-evaluation of their health status.

Unhealthy lifestyles according to rural neighbourhood type

The description of lifestyles in the 15 rural neighbourhoods is shown in Table  2 . A large proportion of participants (81%) reported eating fruit and vegetables 0–1 times per day. Only 1% of the participants mentioned eating fruit and vegetables fewer than once. A substantial proportion of individuals reported eating fish, meat and eggs (87%) 0–1 times per week in all neighbourhoods; also, a considerable share of individuals reported eating bread, pasta or cereal (82%) 0–1 per day, ranging from 78% in parish councils to 89% in small villages. Many participants reported drinking milk (66%) 0–1 per day, ranging from 50% of individuals living in municipalities to 60% of respondents from small villages; 6 and 9% mentioned drinking milk once a week or never, respectively, with little differences in all neighbourhood types. The majority of the population (69%) referred eating fried and salty foods once a week or less, in all neighbourhoods. Some participants (59%) mentioned eating sweets once a week or never, and 7% reported eating more than once a day (2% in small villages, 11% in parish council and 8% in municipalities). Regarding active lifestyles, a large proportion of participants (67%) reported having daily active routines. A lower proportion of participants (21%) reported regular vigorous physical activity, ranging from 11% doing gymnastics (e.g., fitness, Pilates, yoga), 4% water-based exercise (e.g., swimming or water aerobics), 2% bicycling, 1% running and 3% other sports. In general, those living in the municipalities assess better quality of life (following EQ-5D-5L questionnaire); regarding the self-assessment of health and well-being, the inferior levels were observed in small villages.

Characterization of community environment

Individual reflections pinpointed seven dimensions as the main drivers to pursue health and well-being in rural neighbourhoods. These include: economic development, built (and natural) environment, social network, health care, demography, active lifestyles and mobility (Fig. 4 ; supplementary Table S 2 ). Such reflections envision people-centred expectations and a deeper understanding of valuable surrounding environments connected to well-being, which contribute to unforeseen wider ‘needs’ and ‘benefits’ of rural areas.

Individual’s reflections about community circumstances influencing health and well-being in their rural neighbourhood

One third of the participants (86) stressed economic development as the main community need –financial, technological and digitalisation investment, high-value-added industry, industrial infrastructures, digitalisation for remote working–, with particular focus on economic innovation and diversification to encourage the establishment of young people in rural areas. Regional policies to improve investment and attractiveness of high-skilled young workers were mentioned by 12 participants.

Built environment, goods and services, underlined by 73 participants, emphasize the need for maintenance and conservation of (i) infrastructures for social interaction, ranging from cultural activities (24), green-blue areas for practicing physical activity and exercise, e.g., green public spaces, camping areas, river beaches, playing areas for children (18), to connected green-blue infrastructures for enjoying nature (14); (ii) infrastructures for promoting the inclusive walkability, namely for youth and elderly people with morbidities, such as smooth and safe walking paths and resting places (10) or sound barriers (2); and (iii) the patrimonial rehabilitation for tourism and habitation (3). Among the services needed, cafes, grocery stores or restaurants, bank, book stores and shopping facilities were mentioned. However, built environment reflected asymmetries in the neighbourhoods; some participants (7) underlined the accessibility to cafes, supermarkets and restaurants in their respective neighbourhoods as an additional benefit of living in rural areas, while others (11) mentioned safe streets, infrastructures for practicing exercise, e.g., gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis court and walking routes, and cultural activities, e.g., folk activities, folk music, cinema and theatre.

Social relationships and networks in neighbourhoods, mentioned by 81 participants, included local community-based initiatives and means of communication to reinforce social connections and dynamics. Asymmetrically, other participants (20) reinforcing local networks and dynamics as a benefit of living in their neighbourhoods, exemplifying with the active participation in collective grape/olive picking, or cultural and recreation activities.

Health care, mentioned by 42 participants, was mostly associated to elderly dependency and included the need for better and long-term health care services (39), support in transport to health care services (1) and pharmacies (2). Asymmetrically, the suitable health care support and services, primary health care services and pharmacies, emphasized by 9 participants, reflected the beneficial aspects mentioned in some neighbourhoods. Adult social care support, particularly day centres and nursing homes, underlined by 21 participants, including childcare and family care were also among the needs reported in rural neighbourhoods.

Demographic factors, mentioned by 37 participants, focused particularly on population ageing and the need of (young) people (30) as social pressure to improve education and (re)open schools (3) and kindergartens (3). The local education, stressed by 2 participants, was reported as a main benefit in their own neighbourhood, to promote well-being.

Active lifestyles, emphasized by 35 participants, include the need for (i) lifelong learning opportunities and digital inclusion, e.g., internet, information and communication technologies (ICTs) (17 participants); (ii) access to places for practicing physical activity and exercise, e.g., soccer, yoga, Pilates, fitness, pool, and walking (10 participants); and (iii) cultural activities, e.g., dance, music, cinema (8 participants). Mobility, mentioned by 30 participants, included the need of accessible public transport (25) and safe accessible walking routes (5). Asymetrycally, several participants (16) underlined the functionality in mobility –public transports systems– and accessibility and linkages (highways) to villages and cities nearby as a main benefit of their neighbourhood.

Natural resources and natural environment were in the centre of health and well-being in rural neighbourhoods. The majority of the individuals (237) mentioned to like living in their neighbourhood and 55 participants featured the natural environment was as the main community benefit to improve quality of life, describing their neighbourhood as calm, beautiful, healthy and safe. The prioritisation on quality of life include (i) daily routines linked to land use, e.g., gardening, agriculture, silvo-pastoral practices; (ii) biodiversity; (iii) connectivity with nature, e.g., swimming and fishing in rivers, walking in green spaces, woodlands and mountains; and (iv) environmental quality, e.g., lower exposure to air / noise pollution. More than two thirds of the participants (192) mentioned they would not live elsewhere if they could and one third (92) revealed they would not change anything in their neighbourhood. Overall, 216 participants underlined that their own neighbourhood is a good place to live. Specific testimonies on these issues are sampled below (Table 3 ).

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first qualitatively driven mixed-method approach to assess whether unhealthy lifestyles and surrounding environments are reflected into metabolic risks and health capability at individual and community-level in rural neighbourhoods.

In terms of the main findings, excess weight and obesity are more prevalent in men between 55 to 74 years and in individuals younger than 54 years, respectively, while in women obesity predominates between 55 to 74 years while excess weight is more predominant in individuals younger than 54. Considering the overall population, NCD risk linked to BMI was superior in small villages than in municipalities. NCD risk associated to unhealthy lifestyles was less evident for diet and sleep habits than for (lack of) physical activity. Diet habits reported by the participants strongly evidenced the adherence to a Mediterranean dietary pattern, which is linked to healthy lifestyles due to its protective effect against several metabolic risks and NCD, namely type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular disease (CVD), obesity, cancers and total mortality [ 30 ]. Diet and metabolic risks were described as the second and third leading risks factors of early mortality in a recent survey for Portugal [ 31 ]; but it did not address rural and urban neighbourhoods separately. In Europe, DALYs and risks evidences from NCD also often expose dietary and metabolic risk factors [ 12 ], but again little is known about the relationship between NCD burden and community environment. Healthy diet habits reported in our study suggest that the accessibility to healthy food in own gardens and farms as well as in local markets enable the ability to make healthy choices. Indeed, several participants from small villages mentioned they produce their own food (e.g., vegetables and legumes, fruits and nuts, cereals, meat, eggs, cheese, olive oil), whereas participants from parish councils and municipalities mentioned obtaining local products in grocery stores or the local weekly markets.

Low level of regular physical activity and exercise was admitted by most of the participants in all neighbourhoods. Physical inactivity has been recognized as the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality [ 32 ] and the most pressing public health burden of the current century [ 33 ]. Portugal is the second country in the euro-area with higher physical inactivity in people over 60 years of age and among the countries with higher prevalence of multi-morbidity in people between 60 and 65 years [ 34 ]. Two previous reviews have highlighted that physical inactivity may be explained by pursuing health focused on individual-level determinants, such as self-motivation or literacy, whereas surrounding environment also determines the ability to prevent metabolic risks and choose healthy lifestyles [ 35 , 36 ].

The qualitative research revealed people-centred health and well-being expectations, allowing us to identify seven main dimensions in community circumstances: economic development, built and natural environment, social network, health care, demography, active lifestyles, and mobility, affecting the options to improve or pursue healthier lifestyles, with asymmetries among the neighbourhoods. In fact, participants reframed the narratives, “ I like where I am! ”, underlining the benefits of living in their own neighbourhood; while two thirds of the participants revealed they wouldn’t live elsewhere if they could. Several studies have previously researched the effect of place of residence in terms of availability and accessibility in order to improve health [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ].

Economic development and built environment emerged as the main community needs, namely via financial, technological, and digitalisation investment to attract high-skilled young workers to rural areas, and social interaction and lifelong learning activities, respectively, given that built and natural environment are the setting for the development of human activities [ 41 ]. Natural resources and natural environment were stressed as the main value of rural well-being. However some participants mentioned missing planned and oriented structures to connect with nature, such as functional green-blue areas to exercise / be physically active, or socialize, which can be also an opportunity to come with co-benefits for biodiversity and nature protection and conservation [ 42 ]. Some rural neighbourhoods have been associated with less vigorous physical activity due to socio-economic disadvantages, including less availability to, and use of, facilities for sports and recreational activities [ 43 , 44 ]. By contrast rural neighbourhoods with available green spaces and higher accessibility or walkability tend to contribute to metabolic risk prevention, namely for T2DM [ 36 ]. However the (perceived) accessibility of walkability in rural and urban neighbourhoods may vary in different parts of the world. The low use of the bicycle as a mode of transportation reported in our study can be associated with the absence of specific infrastructures for cycling safety (e.g. on-road bike routes, on-road marked bike lanes), mentioned by some participants, but could also be due to the (high) average participant age. Notably, previous qualitative studies have stressed the positive association between adapted designing interventions in the environment for promoting active lifestyles and PA in rural adults, with gains to social cohesion and individual health conditions [ 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ].

Rural neighbourhoods in Portugal are characterized by a higher ageing index, lower geographical access to health care, lower average income and declining population [ 48 , 49 ], but there still is an underestimation of health capability versus disease burden and environment. DALYs have been relevant in terms of the costs to direct health care, namely to the public sector [ 50 ]; however, the translation of such knowledge rarely results into positive contributions and policies to rural neighbourhoods [ 20 ]. Some key subjects need to be considered in further research, including whether the 1) prevalence of women is associated with the demographic uneven structure of the elderly populations, or with women involvement in community, such as agriculture and social activities; 2) increase in evidence-based health and well-being is accompanied by an improvement in community environment, and whether common causes of choosing to live in rural neighbourhoods, such as greater food security, safety, connection with nature, quality of environment, improve metabolic risks and NCD over time [ 8 ] and thus health capability. The ambition of creating accessibility of ‘health-promoting environments’ in green and public areas, to reduce the NCD is well reflected on goal 11.7 of the World Health Organization’s sustainable development goals (2016) [ 51 ]. Populations in rural areas have access to, among other things, healthy food and healthy environmental resources; however rural structural capacities are often under-represented in developing and implementing socioeconomic policies.

In fact, rural marginalization affects health and social justice [ 52 ] and impacts metabolic risks and co-morbidities in populations [ 5 ]. BMI and waist measures observed in this study combined with the participatory approach about lifestyles and community environment, configure an opportunity to act differently in terms of improving health capability in Portuguese rural neighbourhoods, and these findings could thus serve as a driving force for encouraging healthy changes at both individual and community levels [ 18 ].

There are some limitations to this study. The approach was conducted in a single region of the country; thus, results cannot be generalized to other rural neighbourhoods or remote regions. Moreover, data was collected during standard working hours of the week, which might have influenced the sample, including ageing index and the prevalence of women participating. However, we did cover a representative sample of rural populations in Portugal. The eVida has been designed to be user friendly and of almost immediate understanding to participants (10 to 20 min to complete) [ 27 ]. Although the eVida has been re-designed to record information about external environment factors, testimonies were mostly documented in writing and then transcribed. Future research in health innovation devices should also focus on developing programs that can incorporate context-based information, and with it, a better understanding of how ability to pursue health come as a whole from internal and external factors. The use of technology-based devices is increasingly modifying resources and support of health care services and health monitoring, traditionally carried out by health providers in medical facilities. Such innovative devices and adapted strategies have been suggested to encourage active self-management and to ‘empower’ behaviours, and as a way to acquire reliable health-related knowledge to make self-balance decisions [ 28 ].

The qualitative driven mixed-method design allowed us to gather data concerning unhealthy lifestyles of individuals but also to collect in-depth information about community environments that facilitate / weaken individual health and well-being, and their ability to make healthy choices (data saturation was achieved by characterizing broader determinants of health and well-being in neighbourhoods). We believe that the mixed-method described is one way to combine multiple components acting independently and inter-dependently, in order to better understand health capability at both the individual and community levels. The main strengths of the study include the co-designing community program involving the local representatives of the Sicó-network and advanced training students (and young professionals), working together with a trans-disciplinary research team. With the advantages of CBPR, the involvement of community in the early stage of the study provided the opportunity for discussing and adapting the health-related messages for a population with a high ageing index and limited literacy living in the Sicó-network (Portuguese National Statistics, 2019). Such involvement of community and its degrees of negotiation, and flexibility, enabled researchers to uncover gaps regarding (natural) environment contextual-dependent circumstances influencing the ability of individuals to pursue health in their own neighbourhoods.

Our findings are relevant for raising healthy lifestyles awareness and health seeking-skills to improve the self-ability to make balanced decisions, for implementing technology-based devices combined with participatory dynamics, as well as for encouraging the active engagement of local representative planners (governments and other stakeholders) in research to enhance the capacity building and thus the capability for improving heath in rural areas. There are specific contexts of marginalized rural areas for whom the (itinerant) health promotion services and support seem to be an important component of cohesion and equity [ 53 , 54 , 55 ]. The impact of design and intervention with community representatives is planned and further reflexion on follow-up of the healthy lifestyle assessment in rural (and urban) neighbourhoods is required, which is feasible using the tools in a reference site of the collaborative network European innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing (EIP on AHA) [ 28 , 56 , 57 , 58 ].

Revisiting our initial research aim to assess whether unhealthy lifestyles and environment in rural neighbourhoods are reflected into metabolic risks and health capability, we observed that NCD risk in overweight individuals (aged 55 to 74 years) was higher in men in all neighbourhoods; and metabolic risks were more associated to BMI and physical activity than diet (or sleeping habits). The qualitative research allowed us to uncovering seven environmental circumstances reflecting health needs, health expectations and health capability at community-level: economic development, built (and natural) environment, social network, health care, demography, active lifestyles, and mobility, which also underline the asymmetries among neighbourhoods. Notably, participants often reframed their narratives to express the benefits of living in rural areas. Natural resources and environment were pinpointed as the main value of rural well-being, with a particular focus on land use, biodiversity and connectivity with nature, as well as environmental quality. Our CBPR approach contributed for the active involvement of the local representatives and to adapt the health-related messages for older adults with limited literacy. The co-benefits from this co-designing community program and cross-disciplinary research provide further evidence to support people-centred approaches for pushing health and well-being at a broader social, health care and natural environment agenda in rural neighbourhoods.

Availability of data and materials

Datasets used in the study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Abbreviations

Active and Healthy Ageing

Body Mass Index

Cardiovascular Disease

Community-Based Participatory Research

Disability-Adjusted-Life-Years

European Innovation Partnership

European Institute of Innovation and Technology for Health

Healthy Lifestyle Innovation Quarters for Cities and Citizens

Information and Communication Technologies

Institute for Health, Metrics and Evaluation

mobile Healthy Living Room

Non-Communicable Diseases

Systolic blood pressure

Type 2 diabetes mellitus

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Acknowledgements

Advanced training students and young professionals that helped in the implementation of the community program in the 15 neighbourhoods of the Sicó-network: Adriana Caldo, Ana Pedrosa, André Caseiro, Beatriz Vaz, Carlos Farinha, Catarina Santos, Fernanda Silva, Inês Cipriano, Larissa Theil, Lilian Merini, Márcio Cascante, Rafael Rodrigues and Rafael Neves; the members of the Association Terras de Sicó (Lands of Sicó) and all the local stakeholders that helped implementing and disseminating our activities. HeaLIQs4Cities Consortium involved, which is composed by António Cunha, André Pardal, Eugénia Peixoto, Diana Guardado from the Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN, Coimbra, Portugal); Marieke Zwaving from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Netherlands); Eduardo Briones Pérez De La Blanca from Servicio Andaluz de Salud (SAS, Seville, Spain); Roel A. van der Heijden, Ruth Koops van ‘t Jagt and Daan Bultje from University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG, The Netherlands); João Malva, Flávio Reis, Luís Rama, Manuel Veríssimo, Ana Teixeira, Margarida Lima, Lèlita Santos, Filipe Palavra, Pedro Ferreira, Anabela Mota Pinto, Paula Santana, Ricardo Almendra, Adriana Loureiro, Inês Viana, Marta Quatorze, Anabela Marisa Azul, João Ramalho-Santos from the University of Coimbra (Portugal); Catharina Thiel Sandholdt and Maria Kristiansen from University of Copenhagen (UCPH, Denmark). We thank to the Reviewers the comments, which contributed for improving the manuscript. This research work was also developed under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the COMPETE 2020 – Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation and Portuguese national funds via FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, the project UID/NEU/04539/2019, the Centro 2020 Regional Operational Programme: project CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-000012-HealthyAging2020, the FOIE GRAS project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020, Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 722619, and the Decree Law 57/2016 (amended by Law 57/2017).

This research was developed in the scope of the European project Healthy Lifestyle Innovation Quarters for Cities and Citizens (HeaLIQs4Cities), funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology for Health (EIT Health) [Project Number 18036]. The funder had no role in the study design, data collection, analysing or interpreting data, or in writing the manuscript.

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• , João Malva
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Contributions

AMA was involved in the conceptualization and design of the study, all stages of data collection, curation, and analysis and led on writing the paper: original draft. RA, MQ, AL, PS and JRS were involved in the conceptualization and design of the study, all stages of data collection, curation, and analysis and writing the paper. FR, AMP, AC, LR, JOM, were involved in the conceptualization and design, data collection and writing the paper. RT was involved in the visual content. AC, JOM and HeaLIQs4Cities Consortium were involved in the funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Anabela Marisa Azul or João Ramalho-Santos .

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Supplementary Information

Additional file 1: table s1..

Evidence-based data by neighbourhoods’ type.

Additional file 2: Table S2.

Characterization of the community environment needs by neighbourhoods’ type and self-assessment of neighbourhood’ satisfaction.

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Azul, A.M., Almendra, R., Quatorze, M. et al. Unhealthy lifestyles, environment, well-being and health capability in rural neighbourhoods: a community-based cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health 21 , 1628 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11661-4

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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Healthy Lifestyle?

Welcome to an exciting discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of a healthy lifestyle! We all know that living a healthy life has numerous benefits, but have you ever stopped to consider the potential downsides? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we’ll explore both the positives and negatives of adopting a healthy lifestyle, giving you a well-rounded perspective on this popular topic.

Let’s dive right in and explore the advantages first. When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, the benefits are plentiful. From improved physical fitness to increased mental well-being, there’s no denying the positive impact it can have on your overall quality of life. Engaging in regular exercise not only helps you stay in shape, but it also boosts your energy levels and enhances your mood. Additionally, maintaining a nutritious diet can contribute to weight management, reduce the risk of chronic diseases, and promote better digestion. It’s no wonder that so many people are eager to embrace a healthier way of living.

However, like everything in life, there are also disadvantages to consider. One potential drawback is the level of commitment required. It’s no secret that adopting a healthy lifestyle requires discipline and dedication. From meal planning to regular exercise routines, it can be challenging to maintain the necessary habits amidst a busy schedule. Furthermore, the cost of healthy food options and fitness memberships may pose financial challenges for some individuals. It’s essential to weigh these factors alongside the advantages to determine if a healthy lifestyle is the right fit for you.

A healthy lifestyle offers numerous advantages for overall well-being. Regular exercise helps maintain a healthy weight, boosts mood, and reduces the risk of chronic diseases. A balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains provides essential nutrients while lowering the risk of heart disease and obesity. Additionally, healthy habits can improve sleep quality and increase energy levels. However, it’s important to note that a healthy lifestyle might require time and effort, and some people may find it challenging to stick to new habits.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

Living a healthy lifestyle has become increasingly popular in recent years. People are becoming more conscious of the impact their lifestyle choices have on their overall well-being. In this article, we will explore the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a healthy lifestyle. It is important to note that while there are numerous benefits to living a healthy lifestyle, there are also some potential drawbacks to consider. Let’s delve deeper into this topic and understand the various aspects related to a healthy lifestyle.

The Advantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

Living a healthy lifestyle offers numerous advantages that contribute to a person’s overall well-being. One of the main benefits is improved physical health. Engaging in regular exercise, eating a balanced diet, and getting enough sleep can help prevent various health conditions such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. By maintaining a healthy weight, individuals can reduce their risk of developing these chronic diseases.

Another advantage of a healthy lifestyle is increased energy levels. When we prioritize our health, we provide our bodies with the necessary nutrients and care to function optimally. This leads to higher energy levels, allowing us to be more productive in our daily lives. Additionally, a healthy lifestyle can improve mental health by reducing stress levels and boosting mood. Regular exercise releases endorphins, which are known as “feel-good” hormones, promoting a sense of well-being and happiness.

Physical Fitness and Overall Well-being

Physical fitness is an essential aspect of a healthy lifestyle and offers a range of benefits. Regular exercise not only helps maintain a healthy weight but also improves cardiovascular health. Engaging in activities such as running, swimming, or cycling can strengthen the heart and lungs, reducing the risk of heart disease. Exercise also promotes better sleep patterns, which are crucial for overall well-being.

Furthermore, a healthy lifestyle can enhance cognitive function. Studies have shown that exercise and a balanced diet can improve memory, focus, and concentration. By providing our brains with the necessary nutrients, we support optimal cognitive performance. Additionally, a healthy lifestyle can slow down the aging process, both internally and externally. Eating a diet rich in antioxidants and engaging in regular exercise can help reduce the signs of aging, keeping us looking and feeling younger.

The Disadvantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

While there are many advantages to living a healthy lifestyle, it is important to acknowledge that there can be some disadvantages as well. One potential drawback is the cost associated with healthy living. Organic or locally sourced food, gym memberships, and fitness equipment can be more expensive than their less healthy alternatives. This can make it challenging for individuals on a tight budget to prioritize their health.

Another disadvantage is the time commitment required for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Regular exercise and meal preparation can be time-consuming, especially for those with busy schedules. Balancing work, family, and personal commitments while prioritizing health can be a juggling act. Additionally, social pressures and temptations can make it difficult to stick to a healthy lifestyle. Attending social gatherings or eating out with friends may present challenges in making healthy food choices.

Maintaining a Healthy Balance

It is crucial to strike a balance when adopting a healthy lifestyle to avoid potential disadvantages. Finding affordable and accessible ways to prioritize health, such as cooking meals at home and incorporating physical activity into daily routines, can help overcome financial and time-related challenges. It is also important to remember that occasional indulgences or deviations from a strict healthy routine are not inherently negative. Allowing flexibility in our lifestyle choices can contribute to long-term success and enjoyment of a healthy lifestyle.

In conclusion, a healthy lifestyle offers numerous advantages, including improved physical and mental health, increased energy levels, and better overall well-being. However, it is essential to consider potential drawbacks such as cost, time commitment, and social pressures. By finding a balance and making sustainable choices, individuals can reap the benefits of a healthy lifestyle while navigating the challenges that may arise. It is worth the effort to invest in our health and well-being, as the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in the long run.

Key Takeaways: Advantages and Disadvantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

• Advantages of a healthy lifestyle include increased energy levels and improved physical fitness.
• Following a healthy lifestyle can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
• Eating a balanced diet and exercising regularly are key components of a healthy lifestyle.
• Disadvantages of a healthy lifestyle may include the need for discipline and self-control.
• It can be challenging to maintain a healthy lifestyle in a society that promotes unhealthy habits.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the advantages of a healthy lifestyle.

Living a healthy lifestyle has numerous advantages that contribute to overall well-being. Firstly, it helps to maintain a healthy weight, reducing the risk of obesity and related health issues such as heart disease and diabetes. Secondly, a healthy lifestyle promotes better mental health by reducing stress levels and improving mood. Additionally, it boosts energy levels, allowing individuals to perform daily activities more efficiently. Moreover, adopting a healthy lifestyle can enhance the immune system, reducing the likelihood of falling ill and improving the body’s ability to fight off infections.

Furthermore, a healthy lifestyle can lead to increased longevity. By making positive lifestyle choices such as regular exercise and a balanced diet, individuals can improve their quality of life and potentially extend their lifespan. Lastly, a healthy lifestyle sets a positive example for others, inspiring friends, family, and the wider community to prioritize their health and well-being.

Are there any disadvantages to a healthy lifestyle?

While a healthy lifestyle offers numerous benefits, it is important to acknowledge some potential disadvantages. Firstly, maintaining a healthy lifestyle may require significant time and effort. This can be challenging for individuals with busy schedules or those who struggle with motivation and discipline. It may involve meal planning, regular exercise, and prioritizing self-care, which can be demanding for some people.

Additionally, following a strict healthy lifestyle may lead to a sense of deprivation or restriction. It may involve avoiding certain indulgent foods or activities that others enjoy, which can be challenging for individuals who struggle with self-control or have a strong desire for instant gratification. Furthermore, a healthy lifestyle may require financial investment, as nutritious foods and gym memberships can be costly. However, it is important to remember that the long-term benefits outweigh these potential drawbacks.

How does a healthy lifestyle impact mental health?

A healthy lifestyle significantly influences mental health in positive ways. Regular physical activity, such as exercise or engaging in sports, stimulates the release of endorphins, also known as the “feel-good” hormones. This can help reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, promoting a more positive mood and overall mental well-being.

In addition to exercise, a balanced diet plays a crucial role in mental health. Consuming nutrient-rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, provides the body with essential vitamins and minerals that support brain function. This can enhance cognitive abilities, improve concentration, and reduce the risk of mental health disorders.

Can a healthy lifestyle prevent chronic diseases?

Indeed, adopting a healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Regular physical activity helps maintain a healthy weight and improves cardiovascular health, reducing the likelihood of conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke. Moreover, a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains provides the body with essential nutrients and antioxidants, which help protect against various chronic diseases.

Furthermore, a healthy lifestyle often involves avoiding harmful habits such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, both of which are major risk factors for chronic diseases. By making positive lifestyle choices and prioritizing overall well-being, individuals can greatly decrease their susceptibility to a wide range of chronic illnesses.

How does a healthy lifestyle impact longevity?

A healthy lifestyle can have a significant impact on longevity. By adopting healthy habits such as regular exercise, maintaining a balanced diet, and avoiding harmful behaviors, individuals can improve their overall health and potentially extend their lifespan. Studies have consistently shown that individuals who lead a healthy lifestyle tend to live longer compared to those who do not prioritize their health.

In addition to increased lifespan, a healthy lifestyle also contributes to a higher quality of life in older age. By maintaining physical fitness and mental well-being, individuals can enjoy greater independence, mobility, and cognitive function as they age. Embracing a healthy lifestyle early on can lay the foundation for a long and fulfilling life.

Healthy Lifestyle

Final Summary: The Pros and Cons of Embracing a Healthy Lifestyle

So, we’ve taken a deep dive into the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a healthy lifestyle. Let’s recap what we’ve uncovered. On the one hand, living a healthy lifestyle comes with numerous benefits. From increased energy levels and improved physical fitness to reduced risk of chronic diseases and enhanced mental well-being, there’s no denying the positive impact it can have on our lives. By prioritizing nutritious food, regular exercise, and self-care, we can truly thrive and enjoy a higher quality of life.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that there are some downsides to consider as well. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires commitment, discipline, and sometimes sacrifices. It may mean saying no to certain indulgences, dealing with societal pressures, or facing occasional setbacks. We must also be cautious of developing an obsession with perfection or falling into the trap of comparing ourselves to others. Striking a balance and finding what works best for us individually is crucial.

In conclusion, while there are undoubtedly challenges that come with embracing a healthy lifestyle, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. By making conscious choices and prioritizing our well-being, we can unlock a world of benefits and improve our overall happiness and longevity. So, let’s strive for a healthy lifestyle that suits our unique needs and embrace the journey towards a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life.

Melanie Potiaumpai, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar with The ONE Group, works with cancer patient Curt Chambers in the exercise room at Penn State Cancer Institute in 2018. Both are smiling and Chambers is pulling on a resistance band.

Understanding the effects of a healthy lifestyle on mental health

Note: This post is written by the team of The ONE Group (Oncology – Nutrition – Exercise) at Penn State College of Medicine as part of a first-person blog about their work. Learn more about the group here .

May is National Mental Health Month.

First developed in 1949, Mental Health Month is focused on reducing stigma, increasing awareness of mental health conditions and bringing tools and education to promote wellness for everyone. Mental health support is more important now than ever, and organizations such as Mental Health America and the National Alliance on Mental Illness can help. Reducing stigma means more awareness and more conversations and better healthy relationships with the people we love, as well as our own well-being.

What is mental health?

Several areas comprise mental health, including one’s social, emotional and psychological well-being. Lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise and stress reduction can all have a significant impact on improving one’s mental health.

How can a healthy lifestyle help?

A healthy lifestyle may help prevent the onset or worsening of mental health conditions. Several aspects of a healthy lifestyle can improve mental health, including changes in diet and physical activity. Some helpful resources outlining healthy eating choices and changes were featured in the March The ONE Group blog outlining National Nutrition Month. See those tips here .

How does exercise help?

Getting the recommended amount of exercise can lead to beneficial changes in mood, anxiety and depression.

Exercise improves mental health by reducing anxiety, stress, depression and negative mood, and by improving cognitive function. Muscle-strengthening activities should be included in an exercise routine, twice a week. This includes yoga, strength training with free weights, resistance band exercises and bodyweight exercises such as pushups, lunges and squats. Aerobic exercises, such as walking, gardening, swimming, running and cycling, have been shown to reduce anxiety and depression. One to two hours of exercise per week have been shown to reduce the risk of depression.

Does exercise need to be structured or long?

No! You don’t need a gym membership to make exercise a part of your life. Try an exercise snack! What is that? Exercise snacks are a few minutes of activity dispersed throughout the day. See the exercise videos available on The ONE Group’s website and pick your favorite exercise to perform for 30 seconds a few times a day. Not ready for that? Why not try a short walk? Even a short burst with a 10-minute brisk walk can increase mental alertness, energy and positive mood. Additionally, as little as 30 minutes of exercise a week may be beneficial to see changes in mood, anxiety and depression.

How do I get started?

Living a healthy lifestyle isn’t always easy, especially during these unique times. Remember, small changes are all you need. Gradually making small changes – like going for a walk, doing an exercise snack or choosing healthier options – can go a long way to ensuring that you focus on regularly adding exercise to your life.

Health benefits of regular exercise

Regular exercise can have profound effects on several aspects of mental health, including:

• Improved sleep
• Improvement in mood
• Prevention or reduction of depression
• Stress relief
• Increased energy and stamina
• Increased mental alertness and cognitive function

More from The ONE Group

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• Patient guides
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• Educational opportunities in exercise oncology
• Resources for inspiration
• Latest news
• The ONE Group blog
• Email [email protected]

If you're having trouble accessing this content, or would like it in another format, please email the Penn State College of Medicine web department .

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7 Positive Lifestyle Factors That Promote Good Health

How to Live Long and Well

You can't change your genes, or even much of the environment around you, but there are lifestyle choices you can make to boost your health. Being informed and intentional about diet, activity, sleep, and smoking can reduce your health risks and potentially add years to your life.

This article looks at seven lifestyle factors that are backed by the best evidence when it comes to your health over the long run. It shows you why they matter and how to begin making positive changes.

Getting the Right Amount of Sleep

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Getting the right amount of sleep, and doing so regularly, is first on the list. It's often missed because people focus on diet and exercise, but the link between sleep and life expectancy is supported by research.

What surprises some people is that the relationship is a U-shaped curve. This means that too little and too much sleep can affect your health. In one study, sleeping for a long duration (defined as more than 10 hours a night) was associated with psychiatric diseases and higher body mass index BMI.

Another study found that sleeping nine or more hours a night had an increased incidence of stroke of 23% compared to those sleeping seven to eight hours a night. Those who slept over nine hours and napped for 90 minutes or more had an 85% increased stroke risk.

A 2021 study of 1.1 million people in Europe and the United States found that 25% of people slept less than what is recommended for their ages. More than half of all teens don't get enough sleep. Adults do better but have more insomnia and poor sleep quality.

A good night's sleep is important to recharge both the body and mind. It helps the body repair cells and get rid of wastes. It also is important in making memories, and sleep deprivation leads to forgetfulness.

Even if you intend to sleep well, health issues can disrupt your plan. Sleep apnea , for example, can greatly increase health risks.

Sleep apnea affects millions of people, but it's believed that many cases are being missed. Part of the reason is that symptoms like snoring, or waking up gasping for air, don't happen in every case. Sleep apnea can present with a number of surprising signs and symptoms , such as teeth grinding and depression.

If you have any concerns, talk to your healthcare provider about a sleep study . There are treatments, like CPAP , that lower risk and improve quality of life. Changes in your sleep patterns can signal other health issues too, so see your healthcare provider for a checkup if anything changes.

Eating Well-Balanced Meals

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A healthy diet gives you energy and lowers your risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. Some of these conditions have proven links to food and nutrition, as is the case with red meat and colorectal cancer.

Taking steps toward a lifelong change in diet will help more than jumping on the latest fad diet does. You may have heard author Michael Pollan's signature phrase: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Of those plants, choose a rainbow of colors to make sure you get all the nutrients you need.

One place to begin is with the well-regarded Mediterranean diet. It's rich in many of the healthiest foods and naturally limits less healthy choices. The more you follow the Mediterranean diet, the lower your risk of a host of diseases.

A 2018 review looked at over 12 million people and the risk of over a dozen chronic diseases. The researchers found that people who chose a Mediterranean diet lowered their risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other diseases.

The Mediterranean diet includes a lot of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, "good" oils, and plenty of herbs and spices. It doesn't recommend highly processed foods, refined grains, or added sugar.

Making Time for Physical Activity

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Thirty minutes a day of physical activity protects heart health. It also lowers the amount of bone loss as you age, and with it the risk of osteoporosis . It's so important that a 2021 study of colon cancer survivors found that living in a "green" community that is friendly for exercise reduced the risk of death.

A 2017 review in Lancet found that people participating in moderate physical activity every day had a lower risk of heart disease and overall mortality, no matter what their income level.

Best of all, physical activity is a low-cost way to boost your health and even save you money. Sometimes your health may limit your exercise options, but you can keep moving by washing your windows, mowing your lawn, sweeping a sidewalk, and other basic tasks.

Once you are past age 65, you may benefit by adding balance and flexibility exercises, but keep moving too. Whether you dance, garden, swim, or go biking, choose moderate-intensity exercise that you know you'll enjoy.

Keeping a Healthy Body Weight

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Obesity is associated with a shorter lifespan and a higher risk of many diseases. The good news is that just being somewhat overweight does not reduce your longevity. In fact, for those over age 65, it's better to be on the high side of normal than the low side.

A 2018 study looked at body mass index (BMI) and mortality over a period of 24 years. A BMI considered between 19 and 24 is considered "normal" or healthy. For those who were in the range classified as obesity, a BMI of 30 to 35 meant a 27% increase in mortality. A BMI of 35 to 40 was linked to a 93% increase.

Among those with a BMI in the overweight range (BMI 25 to 30), mortality was only higher among those who smoked. People with a BMI on the high side of normal (BMI 24, for example) had the lowest death risks.

BMI is a dated, flawed measure. It does not take into account factors such as body composition , ethnicity, sex, race, and age. Even though it is a biased measure , BMI is still widely used in the medical community because it’s an inexpensive and quick way to analyze a person’s potential health status and outcomes.

There isn't any real magic when it comes to keeping a healthy weight. Eating a nutritious diet and exercising daily   are the true secrets for most people. If you're struggling, talk with your healthcare provider. But keep in mind that fad diets don't work, and your greatest hope for success lies in making long-term changes.

Avoiding Smoking or Chewing Tobacco

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Smoking accounts for some 480,000 deaths per year in the United States alone. Added to this are another 16 million people who are alive but coping with a smoking-related illness . If you want the chance to live well for however long you live, don't smoke or chew tobacco.

The list of diseases and cancers linked to smoking is long. If you're finding it hard to quit, and you think illness comes only later in life, it may help to think of more short-term goals. Perhaps it's too expensive, or indoor smoking bans limit your social outings.

Or maybe the midlife concerns will help you! Smoking speeds up wrinkling of the skin. There's also a link between smoking and erectile dysfunction in men. Quitting, or avoiding tobacco in the first place, will save lives but protect its quality too.

Limiting or Avoiding Alcohol

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Despite the hype over red wine and longevity , alcohol should be used only in moderation, and for many people, not at all. Red wine has been found to offer some protective health effects, but there are other ways to get these benefits.

Red wine is rich in flavonoids, particularly the nutrient resveratrol . Resveratrol, however, is also found in red grapes themselves, in red grape juice, and even peanuts.

Moderate alcohol consumption (one drink per day for women, two for men) may lower heart disease risk. Yet a link between alcohol and breast cancer suggests that even this amount should be used with caution.

Women who have three drinks per week have a 15% higher risk of breast cancer and the risk goes up another 10% for every additional drink they have each day.

It is important to note that alcohol is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Group 1 is the highest-risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation, and tobacco. Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer. The more alcohol you drink, the higher your cancer risk.

Higher levels of alcohol can lead to health and other problems, including a greater risk for:

• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Some cancers

Moderate intake of alcohol may be part of a healthy lifestyle in special moments, as long as you have no personal or family problems with alcohol abuse. As long as everyone understands the risks, there are times you may drink a toast to your good health!

Managing Mental Health

Mental health includes emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, act, and relate to others.

Managing mental health includes factors such as managing stress and maintaining social connections. Research shows that people who report being happier live as much as four to 10 years longer than less happy people.

One way to increase happiness is to manage stress. Although we can't eliminate stress entirely, there are some ways to limit it:

• Take time to unwind , such as doing deep breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, taking a bath, or reading a book. Schedule regular times for these and other healthy activities.
• Take breaks from watching, reading, or listening to news and social media.
• Practice gratitude by reminding yourself daily of things you are grateful for. Be specific. Write them down at night, or replay them in your mind.
• Focus on the positive by identifying and challenging your negative and unhelpful thoughts.
• Find a hobby. Research shows activities like gardening, singing, playing a musical instrument, and other hobbies are linked to living longer, healthier lives Hobbies may reduce stress and provide mental stimulation.

Research also shows that staying socially connected positively impacts health and longevity. Getting together regularly with friends or family members can provide emotional support and pleasure. Other ways to foster connection may include:

• Connecting with community or faith-based groups
• Volunteering with others
• Joining a local group, such as a hiking club, knitting group, or other interest group

For a long, healthy life, the seven key lifestyle behaviors include getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, being physically active, maintaining a healthy body weight, not smoking, limiting alcohol, and managing mental health.

These factors may seem like a part of the common-sense advice, but there's a reason for that. They're all backed by data, and new medical research continues to point in the same healthy direction.

Frequently Asked Questions

To help strengthen your bones, try the following tips:

• Eat foods that are good sources of calcium and vitamin D.
• Get 30 minutes of exercise a day, especially weight-bearing and strength-building activities like walking, dancing, climbing stairs, and lifting weights.
• Avoid smoking.
• Prevent falls. Exercise may help you improve your balance. Also, remember to check for tripping hazards in your home.

Making healthy lifestyle choices can reduce your risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. In a study of 55,000 people, those who made healthy lifestyle choices such as avoiding smoking, eating healthy, and exercising lowered their heart disease risk by about 50%.

The World Cancer Research Fund says at least 18% of cancers in the United States are related to preventable risk factors, including obesity, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and drinking alcohol.

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By Kirsti A. Dyer MD, MS, FT Kirsti A. Dyer, MD, MS, FT, is a board-certified expert in grief and bereavement, and an associate adjunct professor in hospice and palliative studies.

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Health Risks of an Inactive Lifestyle

What is an inactive lifestyle.

Being a couch potato. Not exercising. A sedentary or inactive lifestyle. You have probably heard of all of these phrases, and they mean the same thing: a lifestyle with a lot of sitting and lying down, with very little to no exercise.

In the United States and around the world, people are spending more and more time doing sedentary activities. During our leisure time, we are often sitting: while using a computer or other device, watching TV, or playing video games. Many of our jobs have become more sedentary, with long days sitting at a desk. And the way most of us get around involves sitting - in cars, on buses, and on trains.

How does an inactive lifestyle affect your body?

When you have an inactive lifestyle,:

• You burn fewer calories. This makes you more likely to gain weight.
• You may lose muscle strength and endurance, because you are not using your muscles as much
• Your bones may get weaker and lose some mineral content
• Your metabolism may be affected, and your body may have more trouble breaking down fats and sugars
• Your immune system may not work as well
• You may have poorer blood circulation
• Your body may have more inflammation
• You may develop a hormonal imbalance

What are the health risks of an inactive lifestyle?

Having an inactive lifestyle can be one of the causes of many chronic diseases. By not getting regular exercise, you raise your risk of:

• Heart diseases , including coronary artery disease and heart attack
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Metabolic syndrome
• Type 2 diabetes
• Certain cancers, including colon , breast , and uterine cancers
• Osteoporosis and falls
• Increased feelings of depression and anxiety

Having a sedentary lifestyle can also raise your risk of premature death. And the more sedentary you are, the higher your health risks are.

How can I get started with exercise?

If you have been inactive, you may need to start slowly. You can keep adding more exercise gradually. The more you can do, the better. But try not to feel overwhelmed, and do what you can. Getting some exercise is always better than getting none. Eventually, your goal can be to get the recommended amount of exercise for your age and health.

There are many different ways to get exercise; it is important to find the types that are best for you . You can also try to add activity to your life in smaller ways, such as at home and at work.

How can I be more active around the house?

There are some ways you can be active around your house:

• Housework, gardening, and yard work are all physical work. To increase the intensity, you could try doing them at a more vigorous pace.
• Keep moving while you watch TV. Lift hand weights, do some gentle yoga stretches, or pedal an exercise bike. Instead of using the TV remote, get up and change the channels yourself.
• Work out at home with a workout video (on your TV or on the internet)
• Go for a walk in your neighborhood. It can be more fun if you walk your dog, walk your kids to school, or walk with a friend.
• Stand up when talking on the phone
• Get some exercise equipment for your home. Treadmills and elliptical trainers are great, but not everyone has the money or space for one. Less expensive equipment such as yoga balls, exercise mats, stretch bands, and hand weights can help you get a workout at home too.

How can I be more active at work?

Most of us sit when we are working, often in front of a computer. In fact, less than 20% of Americans have physically active jobs. It can be challenging to fit physical activity into your busy workday, but here are some tips to help you get moving:

• Get up from your chair and move around at least once an hour
• Stand when you are talking on the phone
• Find out whether your company can get you a stand-up or treadmill desk
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator
• Use your break or part of your lunch hour to walk around the building
• Stand up and walk to a colleague's office instead of sending an email
• Have "walking" or standing meetings with co-workers instead of sitting in a conference room

• Get Real about Getting Active (American Heart Association)
• Overcoming Barriers to Physical Activity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Also in Spanish
• Screen time and children (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
• Standing or Walking Versus Sitting on the Job in 2016 (Department of Labor)
• What Are the Risks of Sitting Too Much? (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish

Clinical Trials

Journal articles references and abstracts from medline/pubmed (national library of medicine).

• Article: Patterns of sedentary behavior among older women with urinary incontinence and...
• Article: Assessing the causal role of physical activity and leisure sedentary behaviours...
• Article: Social inequality in prevalence of NCD risk factors: a cross-sectional analysis...
• Health Risks of an Inactive Lifestyle -- see more articles

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• Healthy Lifestyle Essay

Essay on Healthy Lifestyle

The top secret of being physically fit is adopting a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, a healthy diet, taking good care of self, healthy sleep habits, and having a physically active daily routine. Lifestyle is the most prevailing factor that affects one’s fitness level. A person leading a sedentary lifestyle has a low fitness level whereas living a healthier life not only makes a person fit but also extends life. Good health has a direct impact on our personality. A person with a good and healthy lifestyle is generally more confident, self-assured, sociable, and energetic.

A good and healthy lifestyle allows one to relish and savor all the pleasures in life without any complications. Even all the wealth is less valuable when compared to sound health. Having all the luxuries in the world does not fulfill its purpose when one is continuously ill, depressed, or suffering from a significant health complication. A healthy person has a clear and calm perception of everything without prejudice. His actions and decisions are more practical and logical and are hence more successful in life.

A good habit is a key factor for a healthy lifestyle. To maintain a stable body and mind, one needs to inculcate good habits. Waking up early in the morning, regularly exercising or a good morning walk helps to keep our body energetic and refresh our mind. Maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet throughout the day is vital for maintaining a good lifestyle. Too much indulgence in alcohol or smoking excessively is not at all appropriate for a healthy lifestyle.

Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is important for maintaining a good lifestyle. When we are self-disciplined then we are more organized and regular in maintaining good health. A disciplined life is a regulated life. A man without discipline is a ship without a rudder. Discipline needs self-control. One who cannot control himself can seldom control others. The level of discipline and perseverance largely determines a person’s success. Self-discipline is the act of disciplining one’s own feelings, desires, etc. especially with the intention of improving oneself. It strengthens our willpower. The stronger our will power the positive will be our decision. It enables us to conquer our own self.

Punctuality

Punctuality is the habit of doing things on time. It is the characteristic of every successful person and everyone must observe punctuality in order to win success in life. Punctuality is necessary for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It should become a habit with us. A punctual person is able to fulfill all his responsibilities and hence is treated with respect in society. It is needed in every walk of life.

Diet is an important component for overall fitness and works best in combination with exercise. A balanced diet and exercise regularly help to maintain good health. It is necessary to reduce weight if one is overweight or obese, failing which one cannot be physically fit for long. For people with obesity, more exercise and a strict regime are necessary, preferably under guidance. There are many ways of making the diet healthier.

Use less sugar and salt while cooking food.

Use less oil while cooking. Avoid deep-frying as much as possible. 

Eat more fruits daily. They provide more vitamins and minerals to our bodies.

Add sprouts of gram and moong dal to at least one meal in a day. Add fiber to your diet. Use whole grains instead of polished cereals. Eat lots of salad and yogurt.

Eat fermented food regularly. Fermented food contains many useful bacteria that help in the process of digestion.

Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases

By adopting a healthy lifestyle one can avoid lifestyle diseases. The following are some ways in which we can prevent lifestyle diseases.

Eat a balanced diet that contains important nutrients. One must include more fresh fruits and green vegetables in the diet. Refrain from eating junk food. Stay away from foods that contain large amounts of salt or sugar.

Exercise regularly. Spend more time outdoors and do activities such as walking, running, swimming, and cycling.

One must avoid overindulgence in alcohol, junk food, smoking, and addiction to drugs and medicines.

Avoid spending too much on modern gadgets like mobile phones, laptops, televisions, etc. Spend time on these gadgets for short intervals of time only.

Set a healthy sleeping routine for every day. Waking early in the morning and going to bed early at night should be a daily habit. Lead an active life.

Unhealthy Lifestyle

Bad food habits and an unhealthy lifestyle such as less or no physical activity may lead to several diseases like obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, anemia, and various heart diseases. An unhealthy lifestyle reduces productivity and creativity in a person. It also adversely affects moods and relationships. It leads to depression and anxiety in human beings.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle not only makes a person confident and productive but also drives him to success. A person with a healthy lifestyle will enjoy both personal and social life.

FAQs on Healthy Lifestyle Essay

What Do You Understand about a Healthy Lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is a lifestyle that includes regular exercise, a healthy diet, taking good care of self, healthy sleep habits and having a physically active daily routine.

How is Punctuality Important for Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle?

Punctuality is the habit of doing things on time. It is the characteristic of every successful person and everyone must observe punctuality in order to win success in life. It should become a habit with us. A punctual person is able to fulfil all his responsibilities and hence is treated with respect in society. It is needed in every walk of life.

What Happens When One Does Not Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle?

When one does not maintain a healthy lifestyle then several diseases like obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, diabetes, anaemia and various heart diseases can occur. An unhealthy lifestyle reduces productivity and creativity in a person. It also adversely affects moods and relationships. It leads to depression and anxiety in human beings.

What are the Main Factors that Determine a Good and Healthy Lifestyle?

In order to maintain a good and healthy lifestyle, one must be self-disciplined, self-motivated, maintain punctuality and have good habits like waking early in the morning and maintain a regular fitness regime and a balanced and nutritious diet.

Is writing an essay hard?

Essay writing is a difficult task that needs a great deal of study, time, and focus. It's also an assignment that you can divide down into manageable chunks such as introduction, main content, and conclusion. Breaking down and focusing on each individually makes essay writing more pleasant. It's natural for students to be concerned about writing an essay. It's one of the most difficult tasks to do, especially for people who aren't confident in their writing abilities. While writing a decent essay is difficult, the secret to being proficient at it is reading a lot of books, conducting extensive research on essential topics, and practicing essay writing diligently.

Why is it important for one to aspire to have a healthy lifestyle?

A healthy lifestyle is an important way for reducing the occurrence and impact of health problems, as well as for recovery, coping with life stressors, and improving the overall quality of life. An increasing collection of scientific data suggests that our habits have a significant impact on our health. Everything we eat and drink, as well as how much exercise we get and whether we smoke or use drugs, has an impact on our health, not just in terms of life expectancy but also in terms of how long we may expect to live without developing chronic illness. A large proportion of fatalities are caused by conditions such as heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, joint disease, and mental illness. A healthy lifestyle can help to avoid or at least delay the onset of many health issues.

How to download the Essay on Healthy Lifestyle from the Vedantu website?

The Essay on Healthy Lifestyle, which is accurate and well-structured, is available for download on the Vedantu website. The Essay is accessible in PDF format on Vedantu's official website and may be downloaded for free. Students should download the Essay on Healthy Lifestyle from the Vedantu website to obtain a sense of the word limit, sentence structure, and fundamental grasp of what makes a successful essay. Vedantu essay is brief and appropriate for youngsters in school. It is written in basic English, which is ideal for kids who have a restricted vocabulary. Following the Vedantu essay ensures that students are adequately prepared for any essay subject and that they will receive high grades. Click here to read the essay about a healthy lifestyle.

Who prepares the Essay for Vedantu?

The Essay on Healthy Lifestyle designed for the Vedantu is created by a group of experts and experienced teachers. The panel of experts has created the essay after analyzing important essay topics that have been repeatedly asked in various examinations. The Essays that are provided by Vedantu are not only well-structured but also accurate and concise. They are aptly suited for young students with limited vocabulary. For best results, the students are advised to go through multiple essays and practice the topics on their own to inculcate the habits of time management and speed.

What constitutes a healthy lifestyle?

Healthy life is built on the pillars of a good diet, frequent exercise, and appropriate sleep. A healthy lifestyle keeps people in excellent shape, it also gives you more energy throughout the day, and lowers your chance of developing many diet-related chronic diseases. Healthy living is considered a lifestyle choice that allows you to enjoy more elements of your life. Taking care of one's physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being is part of living a healthy lifestyle.

Good Nutrition, Eating Right and proper diet.

Getting Physically Fit, Beneficial Exercise and working out often.

Adequate rest and uninterrupted sleep.

Proper Stress Management.

Self-Supportive Attitudes.

Positive Thoughts are encouraged.

Positive Self-Image and body image.

Inner Calmness and peace.

Openness to Your Creativity and Self-care.

Trust in Your Inner Knowing and your gut feeling.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

Please share!

You know, with all the campaigns by health experts for a healthy lifestyle, it would seem like switching to the healthy side is getting on a primrose path. Without a doubt, a healthy lifestyle is better than an unhealthy lifestyle. But it’s not all perfect.

When you make that shift from being inactive most times to being active and from eating junk foods to eating healthy, some things will suffer.

The good thing is that as some things suffer, a whole lot will get better. Ultimately, a healthy lifestyle will pay off big time. But what are the drawbacks?

In this article, we bring you a list of what gets better and what suffers when you switch to a healthy lifestyle.

Table of Contents

Advantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

1. improved physical state.

When you start adopting a healthy lifestyle, you may choose to add working out to your routine. If you do start working out and keep at it, you will certainly see changes in your physical state.

For one, your lung capacity will increase with aerobic workouts, your muscles will get toned, your energy levels will go higher, and you’ll get tired less frequently. One outcome that comes with your muscles getting toned is an improved physical appearance.

Apart from toned muscles, getting enough sleep, losing weight, staying away from stress, and avoiding intoxicants can help slow down the aging process . These will also contribute to improving your physical state.

As you starting eating healthy meals, you offer your body the right nutrients. You’ll get nutrients like calcium and magnesium from healthy foods like broccoli, cabbage, and non-fatty dairy products.

Calcium and magnesium will help give you stronger bones & teeth, improved muscle tone, improved heart function, and improved nerve function.

You will also get nutrients like vitamins E & C and other antioxidants. These nutrients will reduce your risk of falling sick with various illnesses. Overall, these changes will enhance your physical state.

2. Improved Mental State

One common thing with many unhealthy meals is high sugar content. If you take a lot of such foods, you will experience mental fatigue more than you should. These foods also leave you prone to depression.

Healthy foods, on the other hand, contain moderate to low sugar content. If you switch to them, the likelihood of you becoming mentally fatigued or depressed will fall. Some healthy foods even offer nutrients that can help improve your mood.

Fishes and nuts like sardines, anchovies, walnuts, almonds, and salmon offer omega-3 fatty acids, which are known to help with mental issues.

Exercising also helps with your mental state . As you push yourself during workouts, you reach goals you never thought you could achieve. The feeling of achievement can uplift your mood.

Also, as you exercise or increase your physical activity, your brain releases endorphins . Endorphins will improve your mood, ease pain, and make you feel good.

3. Fewer Hospital Visits

This is quite straightforward, as you eat more and exercise more you get your body to an optimal physical state.

Your heart will be in better shape, your weight becomes just right, your bones are tough enough, and your breathing is alright.

Good food will improve your immune system so you can fight infections easily. When you start living a healthy lifestyle, you no longer take intoxicants. When you stop taking intoxicants, your kidney and liver will be in much better shape.

With all of these in place, you will probably not have to visit a hospital frequently. Well, except you are a health professional who works in a hospital.

4. Healthy Offspring

If you’ve always thought that you are the only one that can be affected by the choices you make about your health, we have news for you. Your health choices can affect your kids.

Kids look up to you and they watch what you do. If they see you involving yourself in activities that facilitate good health, they are sure to learn from you.

Having healthy dinners with them can instill the culture of eating right. Involving them in fun activities can also help them form a habit of being physically active more times than not.

Your health choices can also affect the health of your unborn kids. In fact, your health choices can affect your ability to conceive.

Being overweight or obese, smoking, and excessive alcohol consumption can also contribute to you having unhealthy sperm or eggs.

Having sex with multiple partners without protection predisposes you to have STDs and in some cases, STDs may be the reason you have unhealthy sperm or eggs.

So how do unhealthy eggs or sperm affect the unborn baby? Well, studies have shown that the genetic material in sperm or egg can be modified based on how healthy your body is at conception. This modified genetic material may then be transferred into the baby.

For example, if you are obese at conception, there’s an increased chance the baby will be overweight.

A healthy diet for reproduction will provide the body with vitamins like vitamin E, vitamin C, and B vitamins.

These vitamins can go a long way in improving the health of eggs and sperm. It goes without saying that healthy eggs and sperm are more likely to form a healthy baby.

5. Improved Cognitive State

You probably forget things a lot, way more than you should. Your forgetfulness may be as a result of an unhealthy diet.

Some studies show that certain nutrients can help improve memory and other cognitive functions. Seafood and fruits are some very good sources of such nutrients. The thing is you can only get these nutrients from healthy foods.

Also, if you are always too stressed and you do not get enough sleep, your memory and by extension, your cognition may be affected. Proper sleep hygiene and de-stressing will go a long way in improving your cognitive state.

Disadvantages of a Healthy Lifestyle

1. social hindrances.

When you make the change to a healthy lifestyle, your social life may be affected. Your friends are already used to having similar preferences with you. But your preferences will change with a healthy lifestyle.

For instance, your friends may be reluctant to invite you out to grab drinks if you won’t be drinking alcohol with them. Though, it is the perfect excuse to be the designated driver.

Also, your schedule might change with a healthy lifestyle. You now get enough sleep, you go to the gym, you meditate, and do lots more.

These changes may not fit into your normal social routine and that can affect your interaction with friends.

2. The Extra Effort

Transitioning from your usual unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy lifestyle can be very hard. For an unhealthy lifestyle, you really don’t have to put in any real effort.

But for a healthy lifestyle, you have to make so many changes. The catalyst for living healthy is getting out of your comfort zone and it takes an extra effort to do that. Getting out of one’s comfort zone is not the easiest thing to do.

3. The Cost

Going healthy will take its toll on your pocket for sure. For one, it costs more to get healthy foods. Vegetables, fruits, and even nuts are more expensive when compared to junk food with similar caloric content.

Apart from the cost of healthy food, you may have to pay for a gym membership. You may even have to get yourself an assistant just to reduce the amount of stress you face.

• https://diet.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Disadvantage_of_Eating_Healthy
• https://www.mateylifestyle.com/benefits-of-healthy-living/
• https://www.livestrong.com/article/410164-advantages-disadvantages-of-healthy-food-vs-junk-food/
• https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322268
• https://www.verywellmind.com/foods-for-a-better-mood-89889
• https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/getting-pregnant/in-depth/fertility/art-20047584
• https://healthcare.utah.edu/the-scope/shows.php?shows=0_smfdnnqq

Advantages and disadvantages of eating healthy food

This article explores the major advantages and disadvantages of eating healthy food. Being healthy is something that most people think about. For some, it can be a challenge; however, with the right motivation, they can see results sooner than they think. Eating healthy means consuming fruits and vegetables regularly coupled with proteins like eggs, fish, chicken breast, and whole grains like whole-wheat bread or oats.

What is healthy food?

According to Cambridge Dictionary (2022) healthy food refers to food that is believed to be good for consumers because it does not contain artificial chemicals or much sugar or fat. It is low in calories, high in nutrients, and is not heavily processed. It is also low in saturated fat, sugar, and sodium.

Healthy food is high in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that help to keep human body healthy. It includes whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy, fish, nuts, and seeds. Healthy eating is a way of eating that promotes health and quality of life by acquiring knowledge about food, eating healthfully, and being physically active.

Advantages of eating healthy food

One of the major advantages of eating healthy food is that it is packed with vitamins and minerals that are essential for human body to stay energised and avoid health challenges. It gives people more energy to get through their day and be productive. It also provides the body with essential nutrients it needs to function optimally. It is a crucial part of a person’s daily life.

Eating healthy food regularly will keep the body functioning optimally, and therefore, people will not usually feel sluggish, weak, or have trouble concentrating on anything. According to Sawhney (2021) organic food makes people happy and hopeful, while consuming food high in protein improves motivation and concentration.

If people eat healthy food regularly, it means they are more likely to have a healthy body weight. It can also help them look better in general and feel more confident in everything they do which can easily show up in their appearance.

Eating healthy food is very effective and helps people avoid reduce the risk for chronic health issues. If people eat unhealthy food, or even consume too much of healthy food and beverages, they are likely to put on weight which can lead many other health issues.

Disadvantages of eating healthy food

One of the biggest disadvantages of eating healthy food is that it can be expensive. According to the Food Foundation, cited in (Goncalves, 2021), healthier foods are almost three times as expensive as their less healthy counterparts. It is very difficult for people with less available money to buy fresh fruits and vegetables regularly.

Eating healthy can be difficult to maintain over a long period of time. If people have bad eating habits, it can take a while to correct them and stick to a new healthy diet. It is not something that happens overnight.

It sometimes can be very hard to find the right food to eat. People can choose from many healthy foods; however, finding the right ones for their diet can be difficult sometimes. If they have specific dietary requirements, it can be harder to find the right foods to eat. Also, if they are eating out, it may be harder to find healthy options to eat.

Summary of the advantage and disadvantages of eating healthy food

Eating healthy is important for human health, energy, and appearance. It can help people reduce the risk for chronic health challenges. However, eating healthy food does not have to be expensive or difficult. It can be easier to maintain if people have the right meal choices and are consistent with their eating habits. There are many healthy food options to choose from and people need to find what works best for them. Having said that, it should be mentioned that market and regulatory authorities need to ensure that buying healthy foods is within the buying capacity of all the citizens.

Hope you like this article: ‘Advantages and disadvantages of eating healthy food’. Please share the article link on social networking sites to support our work. You may also like reading the following:

A brief introduction to fruit and vegetable carving

Advantages and disadvantages of working from home

Last update: 12 September 2022

References:

Cambridge Dictionary (2022) Healthy food, available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/health-food (accessed 12 September 2022)

Goncalves, M. (2022) Healthier diets ‘three times as expensive’, claims Food Foundation report, available at: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/health/healthier-diets-three-times-as-expensive-claims-food-foundation-report/657732.article (accessed 10 September 2022)

Sawhney, V. (2021) Weirdly true: we are what we eat, available at: https://hbr.org/2021/08/weirdly-true-we-are-what-we-eat (accessed 11 September 2022)

Author: S Young

S. Young is a freelance fruit carving artist and trainer. With extensive experience in the world of bespoke culinary art, S. Young now writes online regularly, sharing invaluable knowledge. She holds a Diploma in Business Psychology and a Certificate in Fine Arts.

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IELTS Essay about healthy lifestyle

Ielts writing task -2.

Many people believe that every individual is responsible for his/ her own healthy lifestyle. Others believe that governments should take care of it. Discuss both the views and give your own opinion.

SAMPLE ANSWER

Health has become a huge concern nowadays for individuals all over the globe. This is evident from a large number of people suffering from a variety of lifestyle diseases such as cancer, obesity, hypertension, diabetes and heart ailments. In these circumstances, whether the individuals themselves or the government should take the onus for their health has become a moot point. In my personal opinion, both personal discipline and the state facilities can turn the numbers around. Some people opine that an individual himself is responsible for his dietary preferences and exercise regime. Both balanced diet and physical workouts actually determine whether a person is leading a healthy life or not. Moreover, in this fast paced world, maintaining constraint and discipline with regards to food and fitness is extremely difficult which can be achieved only with personal effort. Also, if a person remains motivated to keep distance from bad habits like smoking and drinking, he can lead a better life, physically and mentally as compared to smokers and alcoholics. However, others assume that only the state intervention can help people live a healthy lifestyle. The reason for their belief is that awareness campaigns and facilities can be provided by government effort alone. The state can display billboards, print articles in newspapers and organize talks which help in creating awareness about the role of a healthy lifestyle in keeping the diseases at bay. Not only that, green areas like parks in cities and gymnasiums with minimal charges can motivate citizens to exercise on daily basis. Also, strict rules to ban smoking in public can save the nonsmokers from the ill effects of passive smoking. All in all, both individuals themselves and the government can jointly work towards making the majority of people lead a healthy lifestyle. This is of paramount importance to not only keep the citizens disease free but also to increase their standard of living. (315 Words)

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Healthy lifestyle may offset genetics by 60% and add five years to life, study says

Genetics alone can mean a 21% greater risk of early death, research finds, but people can improve their chances

A healthy lifestyle may offset the impact of genetics by more than 60% and add another five years to your life, according to the first study of its kind.

It is well established that some people are genetically predisposed to a shorter lifespan. It is also well known that lifestyle factors, specifically smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity, can have an impact on longevity.

However, until now there has been no investigation to understand the extent to which a healthy lifestyle may counterbalance genetics.

Findings from several long-term studies suggest a healthy lifestyle could offset effects of life-shortening genes by 62% and add as much as five years to your life. The results were published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine .

“This study elucidates the pivotal role of a healthy lifestyle in mitigating the impact of genetic factors on lifespan reduction,” the researchers concluded. “Public health policies for improving healthy lifestyles would serve as potent complements to conventional healthcare and mitigate the influence of genetic factors on human lifespan.”

The study involved 353,742 people from the UK Biobank and showed that those with a high genetic risk of a shorter life have a 21% increased risk of early death compared with those with a low genetic risk, regardless of their lifestyle.

Meanwhile, people with unhealthy lifestyles have a 78% increased chance of early death, regardless of their genetic risk, researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China and the University of Edinburgh found.

The study added that having an unhealthy lifestyle and shorter lifespan genes more than doubled the risk of early death compared with people with luckier genes and healthy lifestyles.

However, researchers found that people did appear to have a degree of control over what happened. The genetic risk of a shorter lifespan or premature death may be offset by a favourable lifestyle by about 62%, they found.

They wrote: “Participants with high genetic risk could prolong approximately 5.22 years of life expectancy at age 40 with a favourable lifestyle.”

The “optimal lifestyle combination” for a longer life was found to be “never smoking, regular physical activity, adequate sleep duration and healthy diet”.

The study followed people for 13 years on average, during which time 24,239 deaths occurred. People were grouped into three genetically determined lifespan categories including long (20.1%), intermediate (60.1%) and short (19.8%), and three lifestyle score categories including favourable (23.1%), intermediate (55.6%) and unfavourable (21.3%).

Researchers used polygenic risk scores to look at multiple genetic variants to arrive at a person’s overall genetic predisposition to a longer or shorter life. Other scores looked at whether people smoked, drank alcohol, took exercise, their body shape, healthy diet and sleep.

Matt Lambert, the health information and promotion manager at the World Cancer Research Fund, said: “This new research shows that, despite genetic factors, living a healthy lifestyle, including eating a balanced nutritious diet and keeping active, can help us live longer.”

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Healthy Food Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on healthy food.

Healthy food refers to food that contains the right amount of nutrients to keep our body fit. We need healthy food to keep ourselves fit.

Furthermore, healthy food is also very delicious as opposed to popular thinking. Nowadays, kids need to eat healthy food more than ever. We must encourage good eating habits so that our future generations will be healthy and fit.

Most importantly, the harmful effects of junk food and the positive impact of healthy food must be stressed upon. People should teach kids from an early age about the same.

Benefits of Healthy Food

Healthy food does not have merely one but numerous benefits. It helps us in various spheres of life. Healthy food does not only impact our physical health but mental health too.

When we intake healthy fruits and vegetables that are full of nutrients, we reduce the chances of diseases. For instance, green vegetables help us to maintain strength and vigor. In addition, certain healthy food items keep away long-term illnesses like diabetes and blood pressure.

Similarly, obesity is the biggest problems our country is facing now. People are falling prey to obesity faster than expected. However, this can still be controlled. Obese people usually indulge in a lot of junk food. The junk food contains sugar, salt fats and more which contribute to obesity. Healthy food can help you get rid of all this as it does not contain harmful things.

In addition, healthy food also helps you save money. It is much cheaper in comparison to junk food. Plus all that goes into the preparation of healthy food is also of low cost. Thus, you will be saving a great amount when you only consume healthy food.

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Junk food vs Healthy Food

If we look at the scenario today, we see how the fast-food market is increasing at a rapid rate. With the onset of food delivery apps and more, people now like having junk food more. In addition, junk food is also tastier and easier to prepare.

However, just to satisfy our taste buds we are risking our health. You may feel more satisfied after having junk food but that is just the feeling of fullness and nothing else. Consumption of junk food leads to poor concentration. Moreover, you may also get digestive problems as junk food does not have fiber which helps indigestion.

Similarly, irregularity of blood sugar levels happens because of junk food. It is so because it contains fewer carbohydrates and protein . Also, junk food increases levels of cholesterol and triglyceride.

On the other hand, healthy food contains a plethora of nutrients. It not only keeps your body healthy but also your mind and soul. It increases our brain’s functionality. Plus, it enhances our immunity system . Intake of whole foods with minimum or no processing is the finest for one’s health.

In short, we must recognize that though junk food may seem more tempting and appealing, it comes with a great cost. A cost which is very hard to pay. Therefore, we all must have healthy foods and strive for a longer and healthier life.

FAQs on Healthy Food

Q.1 How does healthy food benefit us?

A.1 Healthy Benefit has a lot of benefits. It keeps us healthy and fit. Moreover, it keeps away diseases like diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol and many more. Healthy food also helps in fighting obesity and heart diseases.

Q.2 Why is junk food harmful?

A.2 Junk food is very harmful to our bodies. It contains high amounts of sugar, salt, fats, oils and more which makes us unhealthy. It also causes a lot of problems like obesity and high blood pressure. Therefore, we must not have junk food more and encourage healthy eating habits.

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Healthy Living and Its Main Advantages Essay

Nowadays, many medical professionals, scientists, and the general public strive to raise awareness when it comes to healthy living due to many intensifying concerns, such as growing rates of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and other issues. Healthy living can be described as the willingness to participate in the improvements of one’s physical as well as psychological well-being. Among the most important elements of a healthy lifestyle are proper nutrition, physical activity, weight, and healthy habits. In this sense, the combination of these elements, along with the motivation to improve one’s well-being, leads to many advantages.

Among the benefits that people might experience in their healthy lifestyle is the decreased rates of morbidity and mortality. According to the CDC, proper nutrition with the necessary supplements helps people maintain their weight in the normal range (CDC, n.d.). As a result, people who do not fall into the category of obesity will be less likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or strokes (CDC, n.d.). As for bone structure, proper nutrition and regular exercise will additionally help maintain the elasticity of muscles and the strength of bones. Lastly, a required amount of nutrients will help individuals obtain a better immune system.

However, not every person is able to afford a healthy lifestyle. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the organic food supply is limited, which contributes to its higher prices (FAO, n.d.). As a result, this is the restricting factor, preventing people from living a healthy life since organic food might be more expensive for good nutrition. Still, people might have other options, such as exercising, which does not necessarily require gyms. The impact of such approaches to one’s health might increase productivity and well-being due to energy levels that result from exercise and nutritious diet.

CDC. (n.d.). Benefits of healthy eating . Web.

FAO. (n.d.). Why is organic food more expensive than conventional food? Web.

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IELTS Charlie

Your Guide to IELTS Band 7

IELTS Model Essay: Increased Life Expectancy

In this post, I’m going to write an IELTS Writing Task 2 model essay in response to this question about increased life expectancy from Test 2 of  The Official Cambridge Guide To IELTS :

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

One of the consequences of improved medical care is that people are living longer and life expectancy is increasing.

Do you think the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own  knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

Let’s go through my 4 Step Approach to essay planning:

• Analyse The Question
• Decide My Position
• Generate My Ideas
• Develop My Ideas

I’ll write these 4 steps out in full, so you can see my thinking. Obviously, you won’t have time to write all this down when you plan your essay, but you will have time to think the 4 steps through in your head. In fact, Steps 2 to 4 might happen together, if you think deeply enough about your views.

Step 1: Analyse The Question

The first thing to do is analyse the question.

TWO things are mentioned here: (1) “people are living longer” and (2) “life expectancy is increasing”. However, these are not two separate issues; I think life expectancy is mentioned to emphasise the fact that this will continue into the future, so it’s a long-term issue.

Now, I don’t want to die, so living longer only has advantages to me, but the question isn’t about ME, it’s about people in general; society.

So let’s  reword the question , so it’s clearer: do the advantages of living longer outweigh the disadvantages for society?

Step 2: Decide My Position (What Do I Think?)

So, what do I REALLY think about this issue? In other words, what’s my position on this issue?

Clearly – if you REALLY think about this issue – there are BOTH advantages AND disadvantages to living longer for society, so you should discuss both advantages and disadvantages of you want to write a well-developed response (and have a chance of getting a Band 8 for TR).

On the whole, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages , because we can do more with our lives, BUT only if living longer means being healthier for longer, and being able to pay for retirement.

Step 3: Generate My Ideas (Why Do I Think This?)

Now let’s expand my position – why do I take this position? This is really just an expansion of the position I outlined above, into 4 main ideas .

Advantages:

• A longer retirement means more opportunities for recreational pursuits – (assuming they have the health and money to pay for it.)
• Grandparents can help to look after and offer advice to their grandchildren, making life easier for parents.

Disadvantages:

• Older people are more likely to suffer from health problems, especially chronic health problems such as diabetes and back pain.
• If older people don’t work, they need a larger pension to pay for their longer retirement.

Step 4: Develop My Ideas

Next, I’m going to develop my ideas using a logical structure. This will give me a clear essay plan.

Introduction :

• people are living longer, and can expect to live longer, because of improved health care. Seems like a good thing, but are there any disadvantages of this trend?

Body Paragraph 1: Advantages

• Main Idea 1:  more time to be active and useful
• Explanation 1 : opportunities for activities, hobbies
• Explanation 2 : more people to look after our younger generation

Body Paragraph 2: Disadvantages

• Main Idea: Both these advantages depend on good health and money.
• Explanation 1 : older people more likely to have poor health; health care costs
• Example : chronic health problems (diabetes, muscle pain)
• Explanation 2 : pension funds may be limited. Who will pay?
• advantages greater, but they depend on health and wealth.

So, all I need to do now is expand these notes into full sentences and link them together!

So here’s my essay:

My Model Essay

Over the last half century, life expectancy across the world has been rising as a result of better quality healthcare. This means that today we have an ageing population. On the face of it, living longer seems to be a good thing – after all, nobody really want to die! – but a decent old age depends on health and wealth.

Many people in their seventies and eighties, and even older, are able to enjoy a long and fulfilling retirement. They can travel to new destinations and get involved in a wide range of hobbies and activities that were impossible while working and bringing up a family. Those with grandchildren may also be able to help young, busy parents with such tasks as collecting children from school; moreover, they could share their life experiences with the younger generation.

But while there are tremendous benefits to increased life expectancy, they depend, to an extent, on being healthy and having money. Older people are more likely to suffer from medical problems, especially chronic illnesses like diabetes and muscle pain, which can seriously restrict the kinds of activities they do. This also means increased health care costs, for both individuals and society. In addition, if older people aren’t working, they will have to rely on savings and pensions to pay for their lifestyle, but many older people simply won’t have been able to save enough for a long old age.

Overall then, I feel that the benefits of living older are clear, but these must be balanced against the implications for health and money. If living longer simply means chronic health complaints and grinding poverty for a longer time, it is questionable as to whether it is an advantage at all.

I hope my model essay helps to show you how to write at a Band 8 or Band 9 level. If you think others will find this essay useful, please share it.

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Charlie is a former IELTS Examiner with 25 years' teaching experience all over the world. His courses, for both English language learners and teachers, have been taken by over 100,000 students in over 160 countries around the world.

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Discover the 7 STEPS to BAND 7 in IELTS Writing Task 2

Four healthy lifestyle choices could add years to your life, regardless of your genes, scientists say

• A study found linked between healthy lifestyle habits and living longer.
• This was the case whether people were genetically predisposed to long lifespans or not.
• Lifestyle changes such as eating healthily and exercising can extend lifespan, the study suggests.

Healthy lifestyle choices could help us live up to five years longer, regardless of our genetic makeup, a study suggests.

As life expectancy creeps up worldwide, there's growing interest in living healthily for as long as possible, with some trying to reduce their "biological age" and others turning to personalized medicine to prevent health issues. Evidence suggests that a combination of a person's genetics and lifestyle governs how long they'll live, but a study published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine on Monday is thought to be the first to compare the effects of the two on lifespan.

The study looked at data from 353,742 adults with European ancestry collected between 2006 and 2010, and tracked their health until 2021 to ascertain whether their genes or lifestyle had a bigger impact on their lifespan.

The researchers ranked the participants according to whether they were genetically predisposed to diseases that could shorten their lifespan, and whether they led a healthy lifestyle. Not smoking, exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, having a healthy body shape, and drinking alcohol in moderation defined a favorable lifestyle, while the opposite was unfavorable.

Healthy lifestyle choices appeared to offset the impact of genes on longevity

Participants who led "unfavorable" lifestyles were 78% more likely to die early than people with favorable lifestyles — regardless of whether they had genes linked to a shorter or longer lifespan.

Related stories

The study also found those who were genetically predisposed to short lifespans were 21% more likely to die early than those predisposed to longer lives, even if they made favorable lifestyle choices. At the same time, a healthy lifestyle appeared to offset the effects of genes linked to a shorter lifespan by 62%.

Making favorable lifestyle choices despite having genes linked to a shorter lifespan was linked to living 5.22 years longer than those who made unfavorable choices.

Dr. Liz Williams, a lecturer in human nutrition and a member of the Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield, who wasn't involved in the study, told Business Insider that she wasn't surprised that the study found a link between lifespan, genes, and lifestyle factors. However, she said that the effects of lifestyle factors in the study were notable because they suggest that while we can't change our genes, healthy habits may lessen their impact.

Not smoking, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and eating a healthy diet could help you live longer

The researchers argued that not smoking, exercising regularly, sleeping seven to eight hours a night, and eating a healthy diet formed what they called an "optimal lifestyle combination," which appeared to help people live longer while being sustainable over a long period.

The study defined adequate exercise according to the American Heart Association's guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate activity, such as walking, gardening, or tennis, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week, such as hiking, swimming, or heavy yard work. A balanced diet with an adequate amount of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish, and a low amount of red and processed meats was deemed healthy.

The researchers didn't include having a healthy body shape — i.e., having a BMI of between 18.5 and 30 — or reducing alcohol consumption in their "optimal lifestyle combination." However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that obesity is associated with the leading causes of death, and that drinking too much alcohol can shorten people's lives by an average of 24 years.

Williams said that alcohol consumption and body shape "definitely still matter" for longevity.

It's also important to note that the study was observational, meaning the researchers couldn't prove that the lifestyle changes improved the participants' longevity. Plus, because this study was only done on people of European descent, the same associations might not apply to other populations, Williams said.

Watch: Gen Z is receptive to health information, especially in the social channels where they live, says Haleon's CMO

• Main content

REVIEW article

On the advantages and disadvantages of choice: future research directions in choice overload and its moderators.

• 1 Department of Political Science and International Relations (DEMS), University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
• 2 Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University, Salem, OR, United States
• 3 Department of Psychology, Educational Science and Human Movement, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

Researchers investigating the psychological effects of choice have provided extensive empirical evidence that having choice comes with many advantages, including better performance, more motivation, and greater life satisfaction and disadvantages, such as avoidance of decisions and regret. When the decision task difficulty exceeds the natural cognitive resources of human mind, the possibility to choose becomes more a source of unhappiness and dissatisfaction than an opportunity for a greater well-being, a phenomenon referred to as choice overload. More recently, internal and external moderators that impact when choice overload occurs have been identified. This paper reviews seminal research on the advantages and disadvantages of choice and provides a systematic qualitative review of the research examining moderators of choice overload, laying out multiple critical paths forward for needed research in this area. We organize this literature review using two categories of moderators: the choice environment or context of the decision as well as the decision-maker characteristics.

Introduction

The current marketing orientation adopted by many organizations is to offer a wide range of options that differ in only minor ways. For example, in a common western grocery store contains 285 types of cookies, 120 different pasta sauces, 175 salad-dressing, and 275 types of cereal ( Botti and Iyengar, 2006 ). However, research in psychology and consumer behavior has demonstrated that when the number of alternatives to choose from becomes excessive (or superior to the decision-makers’ cognitive resources), choice is mostly a disadvantage to both the seller and the buyer. This phenomenon has been called choice overload and it refers to a variety of negative consequences stemming from having too many choices, including increased choice deferral, switching likelihood, or decision regret, as well as decreased choice satisfaction and confidence (e.g., Chernev et al., 2015 ). Choice overload has been replicated in numerous fields and laboratory settings, with different items (e.g., jellybeans, pens, coffee, chocolates, etc.), actions (reading, completing projects, and writing essays), and populations (e.g., Chernev, 2003 ; Iyengar et al., 2004 ; Schwartz, 2004 ; Shah and Wolford, 2007 ; Mogilner et al., 2008 ; Fasolo et al., 2009 ; Misuraca and Teuscher, 2013 ; Misuraca and Faraci, 2021 ; Misuraca et al., 2022 ; see also Misuraca, 2013 ). Over time, we have gained insight into numerous moderators of the choice overload phenomena, including aspects of the context or choice environment as well as the individual characteristics of the decision-maker (for a detailed review see Misuraca et al., 2020 ).

The goal of this review is to summarize important research findings that drive our current understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of choice, focusing on the growing body of research investigating moderators of choice overload. Following a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of choice, we review the existing empirical literature examining moderators of choice overload. We organize this literature review using two categories of moderators: the choice environment or context of the decision as well as the decision-maker characteristics. Finally, based on this systematic review of research, we propose a variety of future research directions for choice overload investigators, ranging from exploring underlying mechanisms of choice overload moderators to broadening the area of investigation to include a robust variety of decision-making scenarios.

Theoretical background

The advantages of choice.

Decades of research in psychology have demonstrated the many advantages of choice. Indeed, increased choice options are associated with increase intrinsic motivation ( Deci, 1975 ; Deci et al., 1981 ; Deci and Ryan, 1985 ), improved task performance ( Rotter, 1966 ), enhanced life satisfaction ( Langer and Rodin, 1976 ), and improved well-being ( Taylor and Brown, 1988 ). Increased choice options also have the potential to satisfy heterogeneous preferences and produce greater utility ( Lancaster, 1990 ). Likewise, economic research has demonstrated that larger assortments provide a higher chance to find an option that perfectly matches the individual preferences ( Baumol and Ide, 1956 ). In other words, with larger assortments it is easier to find what a decision-maker wants.

The impact of increased choice options extends into learning, internal motivation, and performance. Zuckerman et al. (1978) asked college students to solve puzzles. Half of the participants could choose the puzzle they would solve from six options. For the other half of participants, instead, the puzzle was imposed by the researchers. It was found that the group free to choose the puzzle was more motivated, more engaged and exhibited better performance than the group that could not choose the puzzle to solve. In similar research, Schraw et al. (1998) asked college students to read a book. Participants were assigned to either a choice condition or a non-choice condition. In the first one, they were free to choose the book to read, whereas in the second condition the books to read were externally imposed, according to a yoked procedure. Results demonstrated the group that was free to make decisions was more motivated to read, more engaged, and more satisfied compared to the group that was not allowed to choose the book to read ( Schraw et al., 1998 ).

These effects remain consistent with children and when choice options are constrained to incidental aspects of the learning context. In the study by Cordova and Lepper (1996) , elementary school children played a computer game designed to teach arithmetic and problem-solving skills. One group could make decisions about incidental aspects of the learning context, including which spaceship was used and its name, whereas another group could not make any choice (all the choices about the game’s features were externally imposed by the experimenters). The results demonstrated that the first group was more motivated to play the game, more engaged in the task, learned more of the arithmetical concepts involved in the game, and preferred to solve more difficult tasks compared to the second group.

Extending benefits of choice into health consequences, Langer and Rodin (1976) examined the impact that choice made in nursing home patients. In this context, it was observed that giving patients the possibility to make decisions about apparently irrelevant aspects of their life (e.g., at what time to watch a movie; how to dispose the furniture in their bedrooms, etc.), increased psychological and physiological well-being. The lack of choice resulted, instead, in a state of learned helplessness, as well as deterioration of physiological and psychological functions.

The above studies lead to the conclusion that choice has important advantages over no choice and, to some extent, limited choice options. It seems that providing more choice options is an improvement – it will be more motivating, more satisfying, and yield greater well-being. In line with this conclusion, the current orientation in marketing is to offer a huge variety of products that differ only in small details (e.g., Botti and Iyengar, 2006 ). However, research in psychology and consumer behavior demonstrated that when the number of alternatives to choose from exceeds the decision-makers’ cognitive resources, choice can become a disadvantage.

The disadvantages of choice

A famous field study conducted by Iyengar and Lepper (2000) in a Californian supermarket demonstrated that too much choice decreases customers’ motivation to buy as well as their post-choice satisfaction. Tasting booths were set up in two different areas of the supermarket, one of which displayed 6 different jars of jam while the other displayed 24 options, with customers free to taste any of the different flavors of jam. As expected, the larger assortment attracted more passers-by compared to the smaller assortment; Indeed, 60% of passers-by stopped at the table displaying 24 different options, whereas only 40% of the passers-by stopped at the table displaying the small variety of 6 jams. This finding was expected given that more choice options are appealing. However, out of the 60% of passers-by who stopped at the table with more choices, only 3% of them decided to buy jam. Conversely, 30% of the consumers who stopped at the table with only 6 jars of jam decided to purchase at least one jar. Additionally, these customers expressed a higher level of satisfaction with their choices, compared to those who purchased a jar of jam from the larger assortment. In other words, it seems that too much choice is at the beginning more appealing (attracts more customers), but it decreases the motivation to choose and the post-choice satisfaction.

This classic and seminal example of choice overload was quickly followed by many replications that expanded the findings from simple purchasing decisions into other realms of life. For example, Iyengar and Lepper (2000) , asked college students to write an essay. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the following two experimental conditions: limited-choice condition, in which they could choose from a list of six topics for the essay, and extensive-choice condition, in which they could choose from a list of 30 different topics for the essay. Results showed that a higher percentage of college students (74%) turned in the essay in the first condition compared to the second condition (60%). Moreover, the essays written by the students in the limited-choice conditions were evaluated as being higher quality compared to the essays written by the students in the extensive choice condition. In a separate study, college students were asked to choose one chocolate from two randomly assigned choice conditions with either 6 or 30 different chocolates. Those participants in the limited choice condition reporting being more satisfied with their choice and more willing to purchase chocolates at the end of the experiment, compared to participants who chose from the larger assortment ( Iyengar and Lepper, 2000 ).

In the field of financial decision-making, Iyengar et al. (2004) analyzed 800,000 employees’ decisions about their participation in 401(k) plans that offered from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 59 different fund options. The researchers observed that as the fund options increased, the participation rate decreased. Specifically, plans offering less than 10 options had the highest participation rate, whereas plans offering 59 options had the lowest participation rate.

The negative consequences of having too much choice driven by cognitive limitations. Simon (1957) noted that decision-makers have a bounded rationality. In other words, the human mind cannot process an unlimited amount of information. Individuals’ working memory has a span of about 7 (plus or minus two) items ( Miller, 1956 ), which means that of all the options to choose from, individuals can mentally process only about 7 alternatives at a time. Because of these cognitive limitations, when the number of choices becomes too high, the comparison of all the available items becomes cognitively unmanageable and, consequently, decision-makers feel overwhelmed, confused, less motivated to choose and less satisfied (e.g., Iyengar and Lepper, 2000 ). However, a more recent meta-analytic work [ Chernev et al., 2015 : see also Misuraca et al. (2020) ] has shown that choice overload occurs only under certain conditions. Many moderators that mitigate the phenomenon have been identified by researchers in psychology and consumer behavior (e.g., Mogilner et al., 2008 ; Misuraca et al., 2016a ). In the next sections, we describe our review methodology and provide a detailed discussion of the main external and internal moderators of choice overload.

Literature search and inclusion criteria

Our investigation consisted of a literature review of peer-reviewed empirical research examining moderators of choice overload. We took several steps to locate and identify eligible studies. First, we sought to establish a list of moderators examined in the choice overload literature. For this, we referenced reviews conducted by Chernev et al. (2015) , McShane and Böckenholt (2017) , as well as Misuraca et al. (2020) and reviewed the references sections of the identified articles to locate additional studies. Using the list of moderators generated from this examination, we conducted a literature search using PsycInfo (Psychological Abstracts), EBSCO and Google Scholar. This search included such specific terms such as choice set complexity, visual preference heuristic, and choice preference uncertainty, as well as broad searches for ‘choice overload’ and ‘moderator’.

We used several inclusion criteria to select relevant articles. First, the article had to note that it was examining the choice overload phenomena. Studies examining other theories and/or related variables were excluded. Second, to ensure that we were including high-quality research methods that have been evaluated by scholars, only peer-reviewed journal articles were included. Third, the article had to include primary empirical data (qualitative or quantitative). Thus, studies that were conceptual in nature were excluded. This process yielded 49 articles for the subsequent review.

Moderators of choice overload

Choice environment and context.

Regarding external moderators of choice overload, several aspects about the choice environment become increasingly relevant. Specifically, these include the perceptual attributes of the information, complexity of the set of options, decision task difficulty, as well as the presence of brand names.

Perceptual characteristics

As Miller (1956) noted, humans have “channel capacity” for information processing and these differ for divergent stimuli: for taste, we have a capacity to accommodate four; for tones, the capacity increased to six; and for visual stimuli, we have the capacity for 10–15 items. Accordingly, perceptual attributes of choice options are an important moderator of choice overload, with visual presentation being one of the most important perceptual attributes ( Townsend and Kahn, 2014 ). The visual preference heuristic refers to the tendency to prefer a visual rather than verbal representation of choice options, regardless of assortment size ( Townsend and Kahn, 2014 ). However, despite this preference, visual presentations of large assortments lead to suboptimal decisions compared to verbal presentations, as visual presentations activate a less systematic decision-making approach ( Townsend and Kahn, 2014 ). Visual presentation of large choice sets is also associated with increased perceptions of complexity and likelihood of decisions deferral. Visual representations are particularly effective with small assortments, as they increase consumers’ perception of variety, improve the likelihood of making a choice, and reduce the time spent examining options ( Townsend and Kahn, 2014 ).

Choice set complexity

Choice set complexity refers to a wide range of aspects of a decision task that affect the value of the available choice options without influencing the structural characteristics of the decision problem ( Payne et al., 1993 ). Thus, choice set complexity does not influence aspects such as the number of options, number of attributes of each option, or format in which the information is presented. Rather, choice set complexity concerns factors such as the attractiveness of options, the presence of a dominant option, and the complementarity or alignability of the options.

Choice set complexity increases when the options include higher-quality, more attractive options ( Chernev and Hamilton, 2009 ). Indeed, when the variability in the relative attractiveness of the choice alternatives increases, the certainty about the choice and the satisfaction with the task increase ( Malhotra, 1982 ). Accordingly, when the number of attractive options increases, more choice options led to a decline in consumer satisfaction and likelihood of a decision being made, but satisfaction increases and decision deferral decreased when the number of unattractive options increases ( Dhar, 1997 ). This occurs when increased choice options make the weakness and strengths of attractive and unattractive options more salient ( Chan, 2015 ).

Similarly, the presence of a dominant option simplifies large choice sets and increased the preference for the chosen option; however, the opposite effect happens in small choice sets ( Chernev, 2003 ). Choice sets containing an ideal option have been associated with increased brain activity in the areas involved in reward and value processing as well as in the integration of costs and benefits (striatum and the anterior cingulate cortex; Reutskaja et al., 2018 ) which could explain why larger choice sets are not always associated with choice overload. As Misuraca et al. (2020 , p. 639) noted, “ the benefits of having an ideal item in the set might compensate for the costs of overwhelming set size in the bounded rational mind of humans . ”

Finally, choice set complexity is impacted by the alignability and complementarity of the attributes that differentiate the options ( Chernev et al., 2015 ). When unique attributes of options exist within a choice set, complexity and choice overload increase as the unique attributes make comparison more difficult and trade-offs more salient. Indeed, feature alignability and complementarity (meaning that the options have additive utility and need to be co-present to fully satisfy the decision-maker’s need) 1 have been associated with decision deferral ( Chernev, 2005 ; Gourville and Soman, 2005 ) and changes in satisfaction ( Griffin and Broniarczyk, 2010 ).

Decision task difficulty

Decision task difficulty refers to the structural characteristics of a decision problem; unlike choice set complexity, decision task difficulty does not influence the value of the choice options ( Payne et al., 1993 ). Decision task difficulty is influenced by the number of attributes used to describe available options, decision accountability, time constraints, and presentation format.

The number of attributes used to describe the available options within an assortment influences decision task difficulty and choice overload ( Hoch et al., 1999 ; Chernev, 2003 ; Greifeneder et al., 2010 ), such that choice overload increases with the number of dimensions upon which the options differ. With each additional dimension, decision-makers have another piece of information that must be attended to and evaluated. Along with increasing the cognitive complexity of the choice, additional dimensions likely increase the odds that each option is inferior to other options on one dimension or another (e.g., Chernev et al., 2015 ).

When individuals have decision accountability or are required to justify their choice of an assortment to others, they tend to prefer larger assortments; However, when individuals must justify their particular choice from an assortment to others, they tend to prefer smaller choice sets ( Ratner and Kahn, 2002 ; Chernev, 2006 ; Scheibehenne et al., 2009 ). Indeed, decision accountability is associated with decision deferral when choice sets are larger compared to smaller ( Gourville and Soman, 2005 ). Thus, decision accountability influences decision task difficulty differently depending on whether an individual is selecting an assortment or choosing an option from an assortment.

Time pressure or constraint is an important contextual factor for decision task difficulty, choice overload, and decision regret ( Payne et al., 1993 ). Time pressure affects the strategies that are used to make decisions as well as the quality of the decisions made. When confronted with time pressure, decision-makers tend to speed up information processing, which could be accomplished by limiting the amount of information that they process and use ( Payne et al., 1993 ; Pieters and Warlop, 1999 ; Reutskaja et al., 2011 ). Decision deferral becomes a more likely outcome, as is choosing at random and regretting the decision later ( Inbar et al., 2011 ).

The physical arrangement and presentation of options and information affect information perception, processing, and decision-making. This moderates the effect of choice overload because these aspects facilitate or inhibit decision-makers’ ability to process a greater information load (e.g., Chernev et al., 2015 ; Anderson and Misuraca, 2017 ). The location of options and structure of presented information allow the retrieval of information about the options, thus allowing choosers to distinguish and evaluate various options (e.g., Chandon et al., 2009 ). Specifically, organizing information into “chunks” facilitates information processing ( Miller, 1956 ) as well as the perception of greater variety in large choice sets ( Kahn and Wansink, 2004 ). Interestingly, these “chunks” do not have to be informative; Mogilner et al. (2008) found that choice overload was mitigated to the same extent when large choice sets were grouped into generic categories (i.e., A, B, etc.) as when the categories were meaningful descriptions of characteristics.

Beyond organization, the presentation order can facilitate or inhibit decision-makers cognitive processing ability. Levav et al. (2010) found that choice overload decreased and choice satisfaction increased when smaller choice sets were followed by larger choice sets, compared to the opposite order of presentation. When sets are highly varied, Huffman and Kahn (1998) found that decision-makers were more satisfied and willing to make a choice when information was presented about attributes (i.e., price and characteristics) rather than available alternatives (i.e., images of options). Finally, presenting information simultaneously, rather than sequentially, increases decision satisfaction ( Mogilner et al., 2013 ), likely due to decision-makers choosing among an available set rather than comparing each option to an imaged ideal option.

Brand names

The presence of brand names is an important moderator of choice overload. As recently demonstrated by researchers in psychology and consumer behavior, choice overload occurs only when options are not associated with brands, choice overload occurs when the same choice options are presented without any brand names ( Misuraca et al., 2019 , 2021a ). When choosing between 6 or 24 different mobile phones, choice overload did not occur in the condition in which phones were associated with a well-known brand (i.e., Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc.), although it did occur when the same cell phones were displayed without information about their brand. These findings have been replicated with a population of adolescents ( Misuraca et al., 2021a ).

Decision-maker characteristics

Beyond the choice environment and context, individual differences in decision-maker characteristics are significant moderators of choice overload. Several critical characteristics include the decision goal as well as an individual’s preference uncertainty, affective state, decision style, and demographic variables such as age, gender, and cultural background (e.g., Misuraca et al., 2021a ).

Decision goal

A decision goal refers to the extent to which a decision-maker aims to minimize the cognitive resources spent making a decision ( Chernev, 2003 ). Decision goals have been associated with choice overload, with choice overload increasing along with choice set options, likely due to decision-makers unwillingness to make tradeoffs between various options. As a moderator of choice overload, there are several factors which impact the effect of decision goals, including decision intent (choosing or browsing) and decision focus (choosing an assortment or an option) ( Misuraca et al., 2020 ).

Decision intent varies between choosing, with the goal of making a decision among the available options, and browsing, with the goal of learning more about the options. Cognitive overload is more likely to occur than when decision makers’ goal is choosing compared to browsing. For choosing goals, decision-makers need to make trade-offs among the pros and cons of the options, something that demands more cognitive resources. Accordingly, decision-makers whose goal is browsing, rather than choosing, are less likely to experience cognitive overload when facing large assortments ( Chernev and Hamilton, 2009 ). Furthermore, when decision-makers have a goal of choosing, brain research reveals inverted-U-shaped function, with neither too much nor too little choice providing optimal cognitive net benefits ( Reutskaja et al., 2018 ).

Decision focus can target selecting an assortment or selecting an option from an assortment. When selecting an assortment, cognitive overload is less likely to occur, likely due to the lack of individual option evaluation and trade-offs ( Chernev et al., 2015 ). Thus, when choosing an assortment, decision-makers tend to prefer larger assortments that provide more variety. Conversely, decision-makers focused on choosing an option from an assortment report increased decision difficulty and tend to prefer smaller assortments ( Chernev, 2006 ). Decision overload is further moderated by the order of decision focus. Scheibehenne et al. (2010) found that when decision-makers first decide on an assortment, they are more likely to choose an option from that assortment, rather than an option from an assortment they did not first select.

Preference uncertainty

The degree to which decision-makers have preferences varies regarding comprehension and prioritization of the costs and benefits of the choice options. This is referred to as preference uncertainty ( Chernev, 2003 ). Preference uncertainty is influenced by decision-maker expertise and an articulated ideal option, which indicates well-defined preferences. When decision-makers have limited expertise, larger choice sets are associated with weaker preferences as well as increased choice deferral and choice overload compared to smaller choice sets. Conversely, high expertise decision-makers experience weaker preferences and increased choice deferral in the context of smaller choice sets compared to larger ( Mogilner et al., 2008 ; Morrin et al., 2012 ). Likewise, an articulated ideal option, which implies that the decision-maker has already engaged in trade-offs, is associated with reduced decision complexity. The effect is more pronounced in larger choice sets compared to smaller choice sets ( Chernev, 2003 ).

Positive affect

Positive affect tends to moderate the impact of choice overload on decision satisfaction. Indeed, Spassova and Isen (2013) found that decision-makers reporting positive affect did not report experiencing dissatisfaction when choosing from larger choice sets while those with neutral affect reported being more satisfied when choosing from smaller choice sets. This affect may be associated with the affect heuristic, or a cognitive shortcut that enables efficient decisions based on the immediate emotional response to a stimulus ( Slovic et al., 2007 ).

Decision-making tendencies

Satisfaction with extensive choice options may depend on whether one is a maximizer or a satisficer. Maximizing refers to the tendency to search for the best option. Maximizers approach decision tasks with the goal to find the absolute best ( Carmeci et al., 2009 ; Misuraca et al., 2015 , 2016b , 2021b ; Misuraca and Fasolo, 2018 ). To do that, they tend to process all the information available and try to compare all the possible options. Conversely, satisficers are decision-makers whose goal is to select an option that is good enough, rather than the best choice. To find such an option, satisficers evaluate a smaller range of options, and choose as soon as they find one alternative that surpasses their threshold of acceptability ( Schwartz, 2004 ). Given the different approach of maximizers and satisficers when choosing, it is easy to see why choice overload represents more of a problem for maximizers than for satisficers. If the number of choices exceeds the individuals’ cognitive resources, maximizers more than satisficers would feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and dissatisfied, because an evaluation of all the available options to select the best one is cognitively impossible.

Maximizers attracted considerable attention from researchers because of the paradoxical finding that even though they make objectively better decisions than satisficers, they report greater regret and dissatisfaction. Specifically, Iyengar et al. (2006) , analyzed the job search outcomes of college students during their final college year and found that maximizer students selected jobs with 20% higher salaries compared to satisficers, but they felt less satisfied and happy, as well as more stressed, frustrated, anxious, and regretful than students who were satisficers. The reasons for these negative feelings of maximizers lies in their tendency to believe that a better option is among those that they could not evaluate, given their time and cognitive limitations.

Choosing for others versus oneself

When decision-makers must make a choice for someone else, choice overload does not occur ( Polman, 2012 ). When making choices for others (about wines, ice-cream flavors, school courses, etc.), decision makers reported greater satisfaction when choosing from larger assortments rather than smaller assortments. However, when choosing for themselves, they reported higher satisfaction after choosing from smaller rather than larger assortments.

Demographics

Demographic variables such as gender, age, and cultural background moderate reactions concerning choice overload. Regarding gender, men and women may often employ different information-processing strategies, with women being more likely to attend to and use details than men (e.g., Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991 ). Gender differences also arise in desire for variety and satisfaction depending on choice type. While women were more satisfied with their choice of gift boxes regardless of assortment size, women become more selective than men when speed-dating with larger groups of speed daters compared to smaller groups ( Fisman et al., 2006 ).

Age moderates the choice overload experience such that, when choosing from an extensive array of options, adolescents and adults suffer similar negative consequences (i.e., greater difficulty and dissatisfaction), while children and seniors suffer fewer negative consequences (i.e., less difficulty and dissatisfaction than adolescents and adults) ( Misuraca et al., 2016a ). This could be associated with decision-making tendencies. Indeed, adults and adolescents tend to adopt maximizing approaches ( Furby and Beyth-Marom, 1992 ). This maximizing tendency aligns with their greater perceived difficulty and post-choice dissatisfaction when facing a high number of options ( Iyengar et al., 2006 ). Seniors tend to adopt a satisficing approach when making decisions ( Tanius et al., 2009 ), as well as become overconfident in their judgments ( Stankov and Crawford, 1996 ) and focused on positive information ( Mather and Carstensen, 2005 ). Taken together, these could explain why the negative consequences of too many choice options were milder among seniors. Finally, children tend to approach decisions in an intuitive manner and quickly develop strong preferences ( Schlottmann and Wilkening, 2011 ). This mitigates the negative consequences of choice overload for this age group.

Finally, decision-makers from different cultures have different preferences for variety (e.g., Iyengar, 2010 ). Eastern Europeans report greater satisfaction with larger choice sets than Western Europeans ( Reutskaja et al., 2022 ). Likewise, cultural differences in perception may impact how choice options affect decision-makers from Western and non-Western cultures (e.g., Miyamoto et al., 2006 ).

Future research directions

As researchers continue to investigate the choice overload phenomenon, future investigations can provide a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms that influence when and how individuals experience the negative impacts of choice overload as well as illuminate how this phenomenon can affect people in diverse contexts (such as hiring decisions, sports, social media platforms, streaming services, etc.).

For instance, the visual preference heuristic indicates, and subsequent research supports, the human tendency to prefer visual rather than verbal representations of choice options ( Townsend and Kahn, 2014 ). However, in Huffman and Kahn’s (1998) research, decision-makers preferred written information, such as characteristics of the sofa, rather than visual representations of alternatives. Future researchers can investigate the circumstances that underlie when individuals prefer detailed written or verbal information as opposed to visual images.

Furthermore, future researchers can examine the extent to which the mechanisms underlying the impact of chunking align with those underlying the effect of brand names. Research has supported that chunking information reduces choice overload, regardless of the sophistication of the categories ( Kahn and Wansink, 2004 ; Mogilner et al., 2008 ). The presence of a brand name has a seemingly similar effect ( Misuraca et al., 2019 , 2021a ). The extent to which the cognitive processes underlying these two areas of research the similar, as well as the ways in which they might differ, can provide valuable insights for researchers and practitioners.

More research is needed that considers the role of the specific culture and cultural values of the decision-maker on choice overload. Indeed, the traditional studies on the choice overload phenomenon mentioned above predominantly focused on western cultures, which are known for being individualistic cultures. Future research should explore whether choice overload replicates in collectivistic cultures, which value the importance of making personal decisions differently than individualist cultures. Additional cultural values, such as long-term or short-term time orientation, may also impact decision-makers and the extent to which they experience choice overload ( Hofstede and Minkov, 2010 ).

While future research that expands our understanding of the currently known and identified moderators of choice overload can critically inform our understanding of when and how this phenomenon occurs, there are many new and exciting directions into which researchers can expand.

For example, traditional research on choice overload focused on choice scenarios where decision-makers had to choose only one option out of either a small or a large assortment of options. This is clearly an important scenario, yet it represents only one of many scenarios that choice overload may impact. Future research could investigate when and how this phenomenon occurs in a wide variety of scenarios that are common in the real-world but currently neglected in classical studies on choice overload. These could include situations in which the individual can choose more than one option (e.g., more than one type of ice cream or cereal) (see Fasolo et al., 2024 ).

Historically, a significant amount of research on choice overload has focused on purchasing decisions. Some evidence also indicates that the phenomenon occurs in a variety of situations (e.g., online dating, career choices, retirement planning, travel and tourism, and education), potentially hindering decision-making processes and outcomes. Future research should further investigate how choice overload impacts individuals in a variety of untested situations. For instance, how might choice overload impact the hiring manager with a robust pool of qualified applicants? How would the occurrence of choice overload in a hiring situation impact the quality of the decision, making an optimal hire? Likewise, does choice overload play a role in procrastination? When confronted with an overwhelming number of task options, does choice overload play a role in decision deferral? It could be that similar cognitive processes underlie deferring a choice on a purchase and deferring a choice on a to-do list. Research is needed to understand how choice overload (and its moderators) may differ across these scenarios.

Finally, as society continues to adapt and develop, future research will be needed to evaluate the impact these technological and sociological changes have on individual decision-makers. The technology that we interact with has become substantially more sophisticated and omnipresent, particularly in the form of artificial intelligence (AI). As AI is adopted into our work, shopping, and online experiences, future researchers should investigate if AI and interactive decision-aids (e.g., Anderson and Misuraca, 2017 ) can be effectively leveraged to reduce the negative consequences of having too many alternatives without impairing the sense of freedom of decision-makers.

As with technological advancements, future research could examine how new sociological roles contribute to or minimize choice overload. For example, a social media influencer could reduce the complexity of the decision when there is a large number of choice options. If social media influencers have an impact, is that impact consistent across age groups and culturally diverse individuals? Deepening our understanding of how historical and sociological events have impacted decision-makers, along with how cultural differences in our perceptions of the world as noted above, could provide a rich and needed area of future research.

Discussion and conclusion

Research in psychology demonstrated the advantages of being able to make choices from a variety of alternatives, particularly when compared to no choice at all. Having the possibility to choose, indeed, enhances individuals’ feeling of self-determination, motivation, performance, well-being, and satisfaction with life (e.g., Zuckerman et al., 1978 ; Cordova and Lepper, 1996 ). As the world continues to globalize through sophisticated supply chains and seemingly infinite online shopping options, our societies have become characterized by a proliferation of choice options. Today, not only stores, but universities, hospitals, financial advisors, sport centers, and many other businesses offer a huge number of options from which to choose. The variety offered is often so large that decision-makers can become overwhelmed when trying to compare and evaluate all the potential options and experience choice overload ( Iyengar and Lepper, 2000 ). Rather than lose the benefits associated with choice options, researchers and practitioners should understand and leverage the existence of the many moderators that affect the occurrence of choice overload. The findings presented in this review indicate that choice overload is influenced by several factors, including perceptual attributes, choice set complexity, decision task difficulty, and brand association. Understanding these moderators can aid in designing choice environments that optimize decision-making processes and alleviate choice overload. For instance, organizing options effectively and leveraging brand association can enhance decision satisfaction and reduce choice overload. Additionally, considering individual differences such as decision goals, preference uncertainty, affective state, decision-making tendencies, and demographics can tailor decision-making environments to better suit the needs and preferences of individuals, ultimately improving decision outcomes. Future research is needed to fully understand the role of many variables that might be responsible for the negative consequences of choice overload and to better understand under which conditions the phenomenon occurs.

Author contributions

RM: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft. AN: Writing – review & editing. SM: Writing – review & editing. GD: Methodology, Writing – review & editing. CS: Writing – review & editing, Supervision.

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: choice-overload, decision-making, choice set complexity, decision task difficulty, decision goal, decision-making tendency

Citation: Misuraca R, Nixon AE, Miceli S, Di Stefano G and Scaffidi Abbate C (2024) On the advantages and disadvantages of choice: future research directions in choice overload and its moderators. Front. Psychol . 15:1290359. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1290359

Received: 07 September 2023; Accepted: 24 April 2024; Published: 09 May 2024.

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Copyright © 2024 Misuraca, Nixon, Miceli, Di Stefano and Scaffidi Abbate. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Raffaella Misuraca, [email protected]

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Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

All vaccines have at least occasional side effects. But people who say they were injured by Covid vaccines believe their cases have been ignored.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City, said that ever since his first Covid shot, standing up has sent his heart racing. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

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By Apoorva Mandavilli

Apoorva Mandavilli spent more than a year talking to dozens of experts in vaccine science, policymakers and people who said they had experienced serious side effects after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

• Published May 3, 2024 Updated May 4, 2024

Within minutes of getting the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, Michelle Zimmerman felt pain racing from her left arm up to her ear and down to her fingertips. Within days, she was unbearably sensitive to light and struggled to remember simple facts.

She was 37, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and until then could ride her bicycle 20 miles, teach a dance class and give a lecture on artificial intelligence, all in the same day. Now, more than three years later, she lives with her parents. Eventually diagnosed with brain damage, she cannot work, drive or even stand for long periods of time.

“When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend,” said Dr. Zimmerman, who believes her injury is due to a contaminated vaccine batch .

The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths . Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but serious side effects . And the Covid vaccines have been given to more than 270 million people in the United States, in nearly 677 million doses .

Dr. Zimmerman’s account is among the more harrowing, but thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600 .

Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.

“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added.

In interviews and email exchanges conducted over several months, federal health officials insisted that serious side effects were extremely rare and that their surveillance efforts were more than sufficient to detect patterns of adverse events.

“Hundreds of millions of people in the United States have safely received Covid vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history,” Jeff Nesbit, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement.

But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.

“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”

Federal officials and independent scientists face a number of challenges in identifying potential vaccine side effects.

The nation’s fragmented health care system complicates detection of very rare side effects, a process that depends on an analysis of huge amounts of data. That’s a difficult task when a patient may be tested for Covid at Walgreens, get vaccinated at CVS, go to a local clinic for minor ailments and seek care at a hospital for serious conditions. Each place may rely on different health record systems.

There is no central repository of vaccine recipients, nor of medical records, and no easy to way to pool these data. Reports to the largest federal database of so-called adverse events can be made by anyone, about anything. It’s not even clear what officials should be looking for.

“I mean, you’re not going to find ‘brain fog’ in the medical record or claims data, and so then you’re not going to find” a signal that it may be linked to vaccination, Dr. Woodcock said. If such a side effect is not acknowledged by federal officials, “it’s because it doesn’t have a good research definition,” she added. “It isn’t, like, malevolence on their part.”

The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

‘I’m Not Real’

Patients who believe they experienced serious side effects say they have received little support or acknowledgment.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City who has worked on clinical trials for H.I.V. and Covid, said that ever since his first Covid shot, merely standing up sent his heart racing — a symptom suggestive of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome , a neurological disorder that some studies have linked to both Covid and, much less often, vaccination .

He also experienced stinging pain in his eyes, mouth and genitals, which has abated, and tinnitus, which has not.

“I can’t get the government to help me,” Mr. Barcavage said of his fruitless pleas to federal agencies and elected representatives. “I am told I’m not real. I’m told I’m rare. I’m told I’m coincidence.”

Renee France, 49, a physical therapist in Seattle, developed Bell’s palsy — a form of facial paralysis, usually temporary — and a dramatic rash that neatly bisected her face. Bell’s palsy is a known side effect of other vaccines, and it has been linked to Covid vaccination in some studies.

But Dr. France said doctors were dismissive of any connection to the Covid vaccines. The rash, a bout of shingles, debilitated her for three weeks, so Dr. France reported it to federal databases twice.

“I thought for sure someone would reach out, but no one ever did,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.

All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.

Even leading experts in vaccine science have run up against disbelief and ambivalence.

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.

He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.

“If they have done studies, those studies should be published,” Dr. Poland added. In despair that he might “never hear silence again,” he has sought solace in meditation and his religious faith.

Dr. Buddy Creech, 50, who led several Covid vaccine trials at Vanderbilt University, said his tinnitus and racing heart lasted about a week after each shot. “It’s very similar to what I experienced during acute Covid, back in March of 2020,” Dr. Creech said.

Research may ultimately find that most reported side effects are unrelated to the vaccine, he acknowledged. Many can be caused by Covid itself.

“Regardless, when our patients experience a side effect that may or may not be related to the vaccine, we owe it to them to investigate that as completely as we can,” Dr. Creech said.

Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects .

Two are associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available in the United States: Guillain-Barré syndrome , a known side effect of other vaccines , including the flu shot; and a blood-clotting disorder.

The C.D.C. also links mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to heart inflammation, or myocarditis, especially in boys and young men. And the agency warns of anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction, which can occur after any vaccination.

Listening for Signals

Agency scientists are monitoring large databases containing medical information on millions of Americans for patterns that might suggest a hitherto unknown side effect of vaccination, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“We toe the line by reporting the signals that we think are real signals and reporting them as soon as we identify them as signals,” he said. The agency’s systems for monitoring vaccine safety are “pretty close” to ideal, he said.

Those national surveillance efforts include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). It is the largest database, but also the least reliable: Reports of side effects can be submitted by anyone and are not vetted, so they may be subject to bias or manipulation.

The system contains roughly one million reports regarding Covid vaccination, the vast majority for mild events, according to the C.D.C.

Federal researchers also comb through databases that combine electronic health records and insurance claims on tens of millions of Americans. The scientists monitor the data for 23 conditions that may occur following Covid vaccination. Officials remain alert to others that may pop up, Dr. Daskalakis said.

But there are gaps, some experts noted. The Covid shots administered at mass vaccination sites were not recorded in insurance claims databases, for example, and medical records in the United States are not centralized.

“It’s harder to see signals when you have so many people, and things are happening in different parts of the country, and they’re not all collected in the same system,” said Rebecca Chandler, a vaccine safety expert at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

An expert panel convened by the National Academies concluded in April that for the vast majority of side effects, there was not enough data to accept or reject a link.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing whether the nation’s vaccine-safety surveillance was sufficient, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “I do believe we could do better.”

In some countries with centralized health care systems, officials have actively sought out reports of serious side effects of Covid vaccines and reached conclusions that U.S. health authorities have not.

In Hong Kong, the government analyzed centralized medical records of patients after vaccination and paid people to come forward with problems. The strategy identified “a lot of mild cases that other countries would not otherwise pick up,” said Ian Wong, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong who led the nation’s vaccine safety efforts.

That included the finding that in rare instances — about seven per million doses — the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine triggered a bout of shingles serious enough to require hospitalization.

The European Medicines Agency has linked the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to facial paralysis, tingling sensations and numbness. The E.M.A. also counts tinnitus as a side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the American health agencies do not. There are more than 17,000 reports of tinnitus following Covid vaccination in VAERS.

Are the two linked? It’s not clear. As many as one in four adults has some form of tinnitus. Stress, anxiety, grief and aging can lead to the condition, as can infections like Covid itself and the flu.

There is no test or scan for tinnitus, and scientists cannot easily study it because the inner ear is tiny, delicate and encased in bone, said Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, an otolaryngologist at Stanford University.

Still, an analysis of health records from nearly 2.6 million people in the United States found that about 0.04 percent , or about 1,000, were diagnosed with tinnitus within three weeks of their first mRNA shot. In March, researchers in Australia published a study linking tinnitus and vertigo to the vaccines .

The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but “at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines,” the agency said in a statement.

Despite surveillance efforts, U.S. officials were not the first to identify a significant Covid vaccine side effect: myocarditis in young people receiving mRNA vaccines. It was Israeli authorities who first raised the alarm in April 2021. Officials in the United States said at the time that they had not seen a link.

On May 22, 2021, news broke that the C.D.C. was investigating a “relatively few” cases of myocarditis. By June 23, the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS had risen to more than 1,200 — a hint that it is important to tell doctors and patients what to look for.

Later analyses showed that the risk for myocarditis and pericarditis, a related condition, is highest after a second dose of an mRNA Covid vaccine in adolescent males aged 12 to 17 years.

In many people, vaccine-related myocarditis is transient. But some patients continue to experience pain, breathlessness and depression, and some show persistent changes on heart scans . The C.D.C. has said there were no confirmed deaths related to myocarditis, but in fact there have been several accounts of deaths reported post-vaccination .

Pervasive Misinformation

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.

Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.

Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research .

But the National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted. William Murphy, a cancer researcher who worked at the N.I.H. for 12 years, has been prodding federal health officials to initiate these studies since 2021.

The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

A deeper understanding of possible side effects, and who is at risk for them, could have implications for the design of future vaccines, or may indicate that for some young and healthy people, the benefit of Covid shots may no longer outweigh the risks — as some European countries have determined.

Thorough research might also speed assistance to thousands of Americans who say they were injured.

The federal government has long run the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program , designed to compensate people who suffer injuries after vaccination. Established more than three decades ago, the program sets no limit on the amounts awarded to people found to have been harmed.

But Covid vaccines are not covered by that fund because Congress has not made them subject to the excise tax that pays for it. Some lawmakers have introduced bills to make the change.

Instead, claims regarding Covid vaccines go to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program . Intended for public health emergencies, this program has narrow criteria to pay out and sets a limit of $50,000, with stringent standards of proof.

It requires applicants to prove within a year of the injury that it was “the direct result” of getting the Covid vaccine, based on “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence.”

The program had only four staff members at the beginning of the pandemic, and now has 35 people evaluating claims. Still, it has reviewed only a fraction of the 13,000 claims filed, and has paid out only a dozen.

Dr. Ilka Warshawsky, a 58-year-old pathologist, said she lost all hearing in her right ear after a Covid booster shot. But hearing loss is not a recognized side effect of Covid vaccination.

The compensation program for Covid vaccines sets a high bar for proof, she said, yet offers little information on how to meet it: “These adverse events can be debilitating and life-altering, and so it’s very upsetting that they’re not acknowledged or addressed.”

Dr. Zimmerman, the neuroscientist, submitted her application in October 2021 and provided dozens of supporting medical documents. She received a claim number only in January 2023.

In adjudicating her claim for workers’ compensation, Washington State officials accepted that Covid vaccination caused her injury, but she has yet to get a decision from the federal program.

One of her therapists recently told her she might never be able to live independently again.

“That felt like a devastating blow,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “But I’m trying not to lose hope there will someday be a treatment and a way to cover it.”

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

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