Self Management

Lifestyle and behaviour have a significant impact on the outcome of many diseases whatever their cause. For example patients with Crohn’s disease who smoke are more than twice as likely to relapse, require hospital admission or surgery than their non-smoking counterparts.

Similarly diets high in unprocessed vegetables and lower in saturated fat (often found in beef and other red meat) seem to reduce cardiovascular risk, as do those associated with relatively higher consumption of omega-3 fatty acids.

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Autoimmune disease appears more common in societies where central heating and  early childhood gastro-intestinal disease are less common. Whether these factors are causative or whether they are merely surrogate markers for other triggers is still to be resolved.

 

It is clearly from the very beginning of life that opportunities and early life events such as caesarean delivery and breast feeding influence the risk of subsequent disease so it should come as no surprise the numerous environmental factors, some of which are under our control can influence the development and outcome of our diseases.