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Healthy Living: How Common Behaviors Affect Your Health

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Healthy Living: How Common Behaviors Affect Your Health
What comes to mind when you think of taking risks with your health—driving recklessly, or maybe abusing alcohol or illegal drugs? Those behaviors are certainly risky. However, many people have less dramatic behaviors that are just as dangerous in the long run. Tobacco use, unbalanced nutrition (too many calories and/or too much of one food group and not enough of the others) and a lack of physical activity are some of the key risk factors for the most common causes of death. Top 10 Causes of Death (in order) 1.Heart Disease 2.Cancer 3.Stroke 4.Chronic lower respiratory disease 5.Accidents (many are alcohol-related) 6.Diabetes 7.Flu and pneumonia 8.Alzheimer's disease 9.Kidney disease 10.Infection

What are the most common causes of death?
Heart disease, cancer and stroke are the most common causes of death in the United States. Nearly 1.5 million people in the United States die each year from one of these diseases, or from complications of these diseases. That’s more than the number of American soldiers who died in the Civil War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined, and it happens every year. Don’t these diseases run in families? How much control do I really have?

It’s true that heart disease, stroke and some kinds of cancer tend to occur more often in people who have a family history of the disease. However, your genes are only part of your risk for these diseases. In many cases, your behavior is at least as important to your health as your family history. If you choose unhealthy behaviors, you are at greater risk of having a serious health problem.

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