Prevent Prevail and Peer Pressure!!!

WE HAVE heard it before, read it in the papers, our parents may have appealed to us, or our own weighing machines might have smiled at us disdainfully.

Yet, how often do we stop ourselves from picking up that cheesy slice of pizza, sipping that tingling cola, sinking into the sofa to watch the highly charged men in blue on the field, or venture out only to get that exhilarating puff?

How many of us know at least two others our own age who are overweight, who suffer from premature health problems, who enthusiastically await the weekend so they can drown themselves in a pitcher of beer and disappear behind the collective clouds of smoke generously produced in the name of "friendship," whose fingers are active on keyboard while the rest of their body switches off to slumber?

Some wonder at the prevalence of ill health habits despite the presence of awareness against them. A key issue that our present day youth need to address is prevention — of health problems and negative health behaviours, also called self-compromising health behaviours.

Prevention means taking measures to combat risk factors for illness before an illness ever has a chance to develop (Shelley Taylor).

There are always cures to help one recover from stress-induced headaches, from alcohol-related health problems, high blood pressure due to obesity. Why are there just as few measures to prevent these illnesses in the first place? The concept that we need not put our bodies through the trauma of pain and palliatives has not yet permeated our ways of thinking and behaving.

Our older generations might not have consciously emphasised preventive measures — perhaps they did not have to. Children back then, as your grandfather will fondly recollect, were fit and fine, enjoying outdoor activities and running about in glee; today's little ones have pot bellies and run about too, a little sluggishly.

A chief concern in the area of health psychology today is the prevention of ill health behaviours, such as smoking, alcoholism, over eating, etc., and their consequences.

Primary prevention involves instilling good health habits and changing poor ones. Several factors play a role here. Age for example explains how older adults are more health conscious than adolescents; value systems discriminate between families that emphasise good health behaviours such as exercise and diet and those that do not. Given how important peer relationships are to youngsters, we can use it to advantage by instilling these good habits among them.

Health habits are strongly influenced by early socialisation with parents; thus, it is essential that one's childhood is richly endowed with active lifestyles, correct sleeping habits and Popeye's herbivorous pursuits too!