This young generation of information technology era in 21st century is seriously at risk of a plethora of non-communicable diseases. They lead fast paced lives. The modern gadget based lifestyle (mobile, laptop, TV, mobike) has tended to take them away from the natural way of life. Physical activities have long since ceased to be a part of their daily routine. School based PT periods are now a thing of the past.
Young people sit for long hours stuck to various gadgets. This way they are being exposed to life stresses at a relatively younger age. To counter this threat and to nip the problem in the bud, we have made an humble attempt by writing this guidebook on ‘’ ‘Mantras for Healthy Lifestyle – A Salutogenic Approach’ for the students. Unless we start early the effect of lifestyle change will not bear fruit.
Waking up after the age of 45-50 years or later is too late. This book will be distributed free of cost to students of 5 selected colleges of Chandigarh as a part of an intervention package of the ICMR project on SALUTOGENESIS being run by the authors. Healthy lifestyle package here includes — physical exercise, healthy diet, yoga, religious/spiritual orientation, meditation and philanthropic activities. It is important to realize here that why we have focused on this package of 6 different interventions. In fact, it can even be more than 7, 8 activities.
The number of intervention components is immaterial. The main issue is the way we approach the health problem that makes our lives different. Often, nowadays, many health related research findings are published in newspapers and magazines e.g. ‘Almonds are good for health’; ‘Vit A or Vit C will reduces chances of some disease’; ‘iodized salt help the newborn healthy’; ‘Cholesterol is bad for heart’ etc. However, we should remember here, that our life is not unidimensional. No individual factor or intervention can operate alone. And no body organ operates alone.
So, individual organ or system should not be the target of our interventions if we want to prevent development of non-communicable diseases, everything should be viewed in totality. For example, if we talk about fat intake and heart disease; it is not the question of fat and heart only. Many factors are involved in causation of heart disease. Fat is just one factor. Salt, roughage/fibres are also important in diets as far as heart disease is concerned. Even this is not all. It is not fruitful to just talk about only diet. Others factors are also important for heart disease e.g. obesity, exercise, stress etc.
Even for fats it has been reported that people who reduced their fat intake had developed depression/suicidal tendencies. This is because cholesterol is also important for brain metabolism. This is why we emphasize a set of interventions to bring about lifestyle change, rather than focusing on one factor only. Students in various graduate streams are entering a new phase of their lives. By doing graduation, students get a passport to join the select group of educated citizens of India. Soon their mature contribution to the intellectual capital of our country will start bearing fruits. The exponentially expanding frontiers of cutting edge science, technology, IT sector, humanities and commerce etc. have opened up vast opportunities for youth.
However, all this development has also brought the problems like fast pace of life, fierce competition, alienation etc. Resulting stresses are plentiful. Norms and values are disappearing. And to top it all, as a contrast to above mentioned positive aspects, the demon of unhealthy lifestyles-sedentary routine, fast food, hedonism, materialism, indiscipline etc. is constantly threatening to nullify all growth & development. These days, there is a lot of talk about empowerment of general public, whether it is about health or our rights in the civil society. The younger generation of our society has successfully emerged as a powerful & responsible partner in matters pertaining to our lives and is quite health conscious. As far as youth are concerned, they tend to yearn for independence. Still, some guidance to them will be beneficial. This book is encourages the readers to imbibe and implement the lifestyle changes suggested in it. It is hoped that the guidelines given in this book will be acceptable to them in the present format used by the authors.
We thank Century Publications for getting this booklet in the present shape. We are obliged to ICMR to give funds through our project on SALUTOGENESIS for this book. Thanks are also due to Dr Muthu Prathibha K for designing the cover page for our book. We welcome any further suggestions or comments for improvement in the booklet so that it can be made more useful for the students. We have dediacted this book to the 50th Anniversary celebrations of PGIMER,Chandigarh, our institute which gave us the opportunity and the atmosphere to undertake this venture. Dr Amarjeet Singh Dr Sonu Goel Dr Suraj Singh Senjam Dr Sonika Goel
Its’ a very good work. I too have similar intentions, mission and experience with a Ph.D. in same kind of work.
I would like to be in communion with project investigators.
Arun Pratap Singh, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor