Healthy lifestyles and noncommunicable diseases: Nutrition, the life‐course, and health promotion

Abstract

Consciously living healthier by consuming healthy nutrition and exercising regularly helps to maintain optimal body weight. This is reinforced by high quality and sufficient sleep, destressing to counter anxiety, and limiting the consumption of alcohol and tobacco to shape healthy lifestyles. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease are the most prevalent and prioritized noncommunicable diseases—they are globally pervasive, increasing across regions, and countries irrespectiveof income,1,2 andafflict diversepeople over their life-course.3,4 Healthy lifestyles, particularly by consuming healthy and balanced diets and exercising regularly at moderateto-high intensity, can help to prevent noncommunicable diseases and obesity. Obesity is a key driver of noncommunicable diseases, is associated with diabetes, often contributes to cardiovascular disease, and is linked to some cancer types, and, like noncommunicable diseases, is pervasive and increasing globally. Poor nutritional choices such as the overconsumption of calories and nutrients, or deficiencies in macro(e.g., protein) and micronutrients (e.g., iron) fuel the noncommunicable diseases and obesity epidemics which are further compounded by sedentary lifestyles. Contextualizing the global obesity and noncommunicable diseases epidemics is important for policy development and refinement. With 38 million overweight/obese children < 5 years; 340 million overweight/obese 5–19-year-old children and adolescents; and 1.9 billion overweight adults ≥18 years, of which 650 million are obese; overweight/obesity presents a major global and public health burden that spans the life-course.5 Further, overweight/obesity is increasing in lowand middle-income countries (LMIC) against a background of infectious diseases and undernutrition, concomitant with increasing noncommunicable diseases, as populations increase in number and advance in age.5,6 The noncommunicable disease burden in sub-Saharan Africa (viz., cardiovascular diseases; diabetes; mental disorders; neoplasms; urogenital, blood, and endocrine diseases) has exceeded the global average and is approaching the total burden of infectious diseases, which underlines the urgent need for them to be prioritized and brought to the fore of development agendas.6 Given the high global prevalence of overweight/obesity5 and noncommunicable diseases7 that extend across the life-course, are pervasive,