Chapter Summary

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Chapter 6 Summary

• Health lies in the medical domain, however, health is affected by physical activity and nutrition, both of which have a key role to play in primary prevention and in secondary care management.
• Health is a wide ranging concept, as evidenced by the U.K. Department of Health ‘tips’ that attempt to guide the population to better health.
• Dimensions of health might include physiological health, the absence of disease, the freedom from illness and psycho-social health.
• The population approach to improving health complements the high risk approach, the latter having the potential to be influenced by nutrigenomics – the influence of nutrition and individual genetic variation on risk factors for chronic diseases.
• A major risk of physical inactivity is the incidence of coronary heart disease, the risk amongst sedentary people being nearly two-fold.
• There are numerous benefits to health of regular physical activity, including those that benefit the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems, and metabolism, and psychological health.
• Measurements of population physical activity levels have shown that in affluent countries such as the U.K., the majority of the population are insufficiently active to optimally benefit health.
• Nutrition, working in tandem with physical activity can remodel physiology and metabolism and improve health.
• Disease risk, in states such as diabetes mellitus and cancer can be reduced through optimal nutrition, and can also be used to manage aspects of disease.
• Alcohol has found a place in society and in culture but can be detrimental to both short-term and long-term health, contributing significantly but unhelpfully to energy intake, and also to hypertension