Hidden Dangers of Modern Lifestyles: Biological Feedback from Diet, Habits, and Stress

(1) Unreasonable dietary structure and unhealthy eating habits: Modern diets are often high in calories, low in protein, and lacking in nutrients. In addition, excessive artificial additives in food and the short maturation period and nutritional deficiencies in artificially raised animals lead to deficiencies in many essential nutrients, an increase in obesity, and metabolic disorders. Many people neglect breakfast and excessively diet, leaving their bodies frequently in a state of hunger and their brains in a state of oxygen deficiency. This, in turn, affects the normal secretion of adrenaline, growth hormone, and thyroid hormone, resulting in symptoms such as palpitations, fatigue, depression, blurred vision, hypoglycemia, and fainting.

(2) Bad habits: We know that moderate drinking can dispel wind and cold, clear the meridians, relieve fatigue, and invigorate the spirit. However, alcohol is the liquid of cooked grains, and excessive drinking can generate phlegm and internal heat. Excessive drinking can cause symptoms of damp-heat such as fatigue, abdominal distension, headache, dry mouth, sticky tongue coating, and loss of appetite. Smoking also poses significant health risks. Cigarette smoke is hot and dry, easily damaging lung yin. The lungs are the source of water; damage to lung qi disrupts their dispersing and descending functions, leading to imbalanced water metabolism and the internal generation of phlegm and dampness. Therefore, the bad habits of smoking and drinking also contribute to dampness and heat, playing a role in the formation of a damp-heat constitution.

(3) Unhealthy Exercise Habits Life lies in movement, and life also lies in rest. While the human body shares many commonalities in its life processes, individual differences also exist. Therefore, maintaining good health is a profound subject. At different ages, everyone's physical condition is constantly changing. Improper exercise, lacking scientific guidance, can also damage health.

(4) Unhealthy Lifestyles During evolution, the human body has developed inherent life movement laws—the biological clock—which maintains the regularity of blood circulation and metabolism. Irregular work and rest schedules and an unhealthy lifestyle often disrupt the body's biological clock, affecting normal cellular metabolism and leading to a sub-healthy state in the long run. Genes are the functional units of hereditary material within cells, carrying genetic information. Through accurate self-replication, they are passed down through generations, controlling and influencing the growth and development of specific traits in the next generation. Gene expression is spatiotemporal, thus it can predict the health of an individual, and even an unborn child, for decades to come.

While genetic factors play a relatively minor role in the causes of sub-health, the influence of inherited physical characteristics, physiological features, metabolic types, and behavioral instincts on disease and personality is quite certain. The composition, structure, activity patterns, and biological functions of DNA, its location and distribution on chromosomes, and polymorphisms including segment length, sequence, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and even variations, are all specific aspects of heredity. Scientists are constantly discovering increasing connections between behavior, personality, and genetic composition. Modern life is fast-paced, knowledge is updated rapidly, and competition is fierce. While society provides people with more opportunities for development and choices, it also brings more risks and pressures.

People hope to keep up with the times, win in the competition, and become successful. This requires them to study hard, strive to improve themselves, and enhance their abilities and qualities. Even if a person exerts their utmost effort and dares not slacken, they cannot guarantee success, because others are equally hardworking and diligent, perhaps even more so. These real or imagined dangerous situations create pressure, and sustained pressure can negatively impact physical and mental health.

Physiologist H. Selye studied stress responses and proposed a stress theory. He placed experimental animals under various environmental stimuli and discovered characteristic physiological and biochemical reactions in these animals. He called this systemic response, observed under various stimuli, "systemic adaptation syndrome." He believed that systemic adaptation syndrome was largely unrelated to the type of stimulus and exhibited cross-situational consistency, hence the term "non-specific response." This non-specific response was regulated by the pituitary-adrenal axis. For example, when a local infection occurs, the body experiences a specific response—local inflammation—accompanied by increased activity of the pituitary-adrenal axis. Seri called this specific response "local adaptation syndrome." If the local stimulus is weak, "local adaptation syndrome" is sufficient to restore the body's homeostasis. If the stimulus is severe enough to affect the whole body, it will cause "systemic adaptation syndrome." Therefore, Seri believed that stress is both an adaptive response of the body to external stimuli and, in some cases, a mechanism leading to disease. He called these diseases "adaptive diseases," producing a series of psychosomatic reactions.

Seri used "systemic adaptation syndrome" to explain the physiological response to stress, believing that the response process can be divided into three stages.

The first stage is called the alert phase. During this stage, the individual perceives a threat from the environment, the sympathetic nervous system is activated, triggering an avoidance or resistance response. The body mobilizes energy to cope with the stressor.

The second stage is the resistance phase. At this stage, the alert phase response disappears, and the body is in a state of long-term struggle against the stressor. Under the coordination of the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems, all systems are mobilized. Researchers believe that each person has different levels of adaptive energy reserves, which have a psychosomatic basis and are used to cope with various stresses.

The third stage is the exhaustion phase. In this stage, the physiological and psychological energy used to combat stress has been depleted, and the body needs energy replenishment.