Know How Your Health Is Influenced By Your Environment!

The health of human beings is directly proportional to the health of their surroundings. Being able to breathe fresh air, drink clean water, and exist within peaceful sounds allows one’s body and mind to be hale and hearty. This is the primary reason why people from hill stations or the countryside seem to be healthier than those living in polluted urban cities. Following are the ways in which your environment affects your health,

1. Consumption of carcinogens - Cancer is a modern disease. The simple reason for this is that technological development has brought with new categories of pollutants. Many of these contain chemicals and compounds that are carcinogenic. Hence, a polluted environment can very well be the reason for you getting cancer!

2. Polluted air - polluted air is the first thing that attacks your body. Air, water, and food are the three basic necessities of all humans. Of these, air is the most important. Polluted air can cause several life-threatening diseases like asthma or bronchitis. Smoke from machines, vehicles outside, and from stoves, burning of fuels inside can cause breathing problems and wheezing. This is extremely common in poor households, where one is forced to use kerosene stoves in small rooms that trap the smoke.

3. The weakening of bones - Polluted air in your lungs leads to weakened bones. Medical experts have now confirmed that poor quality of air is one of the primary causes of rheumatoid arthritis. Airborne pollutants are known to cause inflammation and thickening of blood vessels. This can lead to heart attacks or strokes.

4. An environment conducive to bacterial growth - a dirty environment often allows breeding of insects and bacteria that become carriers of life-threatening diseases such as dengue, typhoid, diphtheria, malaria, and so on. Most of the diseases mentioned here are caused by mosquitoes that thrive on stagnant water.

5. High blood pressure - an unhealthy environment entails difficulty in breathing, consumption of toxic food, and unclean water. Moreover, noise pollution adds to one’s stress level. These problems cause higher blood pressure which can lead to the weakening of the heart which can cause death by an early heart attack.

6. Toxic food - both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food faces the danger of becoming toxic if the environment it is being grown in is polluted. For eg- chemical wastes that are often dumped in water bodies cause the seafood in that area to become highly toxic. Hence, the environmental quality of a region has a direct impact on the food produced in that area.