Although prevention of death has always been an underlying desire in man, a short but difficult life has meant that strategies aimed at achieving this end have conspicuously not been used wherein society has had a choice, since their side effects have either limited the quality of an individual's life or have resulted in death before the onset of the diseases of affluence that are now so common. However, an increased average life span has resulted from reduced starvation and the management of infant mortality, accidents, infectious diseases, and intrapartum problems. During the last 50 years, with further relative reductions in morbidity and mortality, effective interventions introduced for diseases such as lung, breast and cervical cancer, coronary heart diseases, strokes, diabetes, and the diseases caused by smoking have acted, along with these other factors, to create populations with a life expectancy that is in some situations increasing by two to four years every decade. In the USA, it is estimated that the population of 'oldest-old', people older than 85 years, will be 10% of the population by the middle of the 21st century. Achieving the status of 'oldest-old' is increasingly possible, since increases in healthy, active life have been keeping pace with advances in life expectancy, and our need for dependent care may be delayed until after the age of 85 by positive health-related life styles throughout earlier life. These 'good health' years can be experienced in a fit and active old age up to the limit imposed by the inherent determinants of life span or by functional deterioration of vital systems. There are very large differences in the health and fitness of individuals as a function of their demographic and geographic origin, as well as the individual life style choices that are made in these societies, with up to 40 years' variation in the limits of old age for the 'oldest-old'.The perfect free essay in just 5 minutes: it's your turn!Let's write
1.1. Background and Significance
The worldwide rise in chronic disease and challenges facing health care, coupled with the substantial estimated influences of behavior (80-90% of risk for the most common chronic diseases) and lifestyle changes (to increase life expectancy and quality) on both, have driven notable increases in research examining relations between health-related behaviors or lifestyle and clinically related outcomes of morbidity, functional status, quality of life, and longevity. These advances make it an opportune time to systematically synthesize evidence from some of these largely overlapping fields of interest and activity; assess consistency of associations and potential biases in individual studies, parallel systematic reviews, or authoritative consensus positions; and identify likely patterns or mechanisms to help guide health care choices and investments. There is the strong risk of overemphasizing a specific behavior's influence or of failing to consider the unique overall multidimensional context of the human condition, its motivating integration of health and welfare interests, the varied and evolving influences on behaviors, preferences across cultural, clinical, functional, and life stages, and the dynamic and cumulative effects of behaviors across the lifespan throughout the course of clinical health or stages of end of life and quality of life or gains in longevity. Key points about this single setting for assessing influences of lifestyle on quality of life include the following: Lifestyle choices (e.g. regular exercise or physical activity, low intakes of energy-dense diets, moderate alcohol use at mealtimes, and absence of smoking) have large and beneficial influences on cardiovascular risk factors, the common mental and cognitive, and the malignant chronic diseases, and their manifestations contribute ~40% of cumulative health care expenditures.
1.2. Purpose of the Study
What is a good quality of life (Qualité de Vie)? What factors do people believe are important to make their life one of "high" quality? Can an individual's quality of life affect the length of his or her life? Do public policies need to be different in order to improve the quality of life within and between countries and/or lengthen the lives of people in specific countries? Since 1930, at least eleven authoritative investigations of such questions in the United States have been performed (usually as collectives of questions surrounding the population census), and numerous surveys have been conducted around the world in a wide variety of countries. Studies cited in Table 1, as well as others the author has conducted not in time to be reviewed by him, are external inputs to a research program focused on examining the relation between lifestyle choic
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