Health is the greatest gift of nature
Health is the greatest gift of nature. Man has received from nature an extremely perfect organism of beautiful form, with universal resistance to the difficulties of life - cold and heat, wounds and poisons, fears and nervous shocks, hunger and diseases. Unfortunately, not everyone is equally endowed with the gift of health. Over the years, health becomes weaker, and diseases become more and more. Each person is a unity of two opposites - health and disease. There are very few absolutely healthy people, the majority are in the so-called third state - intermediate between health and disease. The body fights diseases, the consequences of this fight depend on the size of health reserves.
The factors that determine the health of the population include the following: reproduction of health, its formation, expenditure and recovery. Reproduction of health, or the protection and implementation of the gene pool, the birth of healthy offspring, is determined by many biological, socio-economic and sanitary-hygienic conditions. This is the health of the parents, the level of their general and sanitary culture, the conditions of pregnancy and childbirth, the preservation of the reserve of physiological functions of the future mother's body, the state of the obstetric service and the network of medical and genetic consultations. Many congenital diseases and developmental defects are caused not by genetic anomalies, but by toxic, infectious and other harmful effects on the fetus during pregnancy. In this aspect, a huge role belongs to the state of the environment and the moral and ethical characteristics of future parents. Friendly advice from medical workers can change the decision of a young family to have a child from mentally disabled parents, chronic alcoholics, drug addicts, seriously ill people.
The formation of health is determined by a person's lifestyle and the state of the environment. All of an individual's hereditary characteristics are encoded in the genotype of an individual. However, in order for them to manifest themselves in the form of certain qualities of the organism and personality, natural for biological and social functions, certain conditions are necessary, which are determined by the lifestyle and the external environment itself. A health worker can significantly influence an individual's lifestyle.
The process of health loss occurs in the production sector. Therefore, the following are of particular importance: the nature, organization and working conditions. In production activities, great attention should be paid to optimizing working conditions based on sanitary and hygienic standards with permissible levels and concentrations of various physical and chemical factors (temperature, noise, vibration, lighting, gas impurities, etc.).
The process of restoring health includes recreation (rest). treatment and medical and social rehabilitation (restoration of treatment), that is, the restoration of the social status of sick and disabled people.
Three levels of personality (somatic, mental, and social) correspond to three aspects of health: physical (somatic), mental, and social. The solution of practical problems in health care is primarily related to the diagnosis of the level of somatic health of a person.
The development of many somatic diseases is associated with the negative influence of a number of factors of the internal and external environment. These factors are called risk factors. Conventionally, risk factors are divided into 2 groups: factors of the external environment (social and cultural) and internal. The 1st group includes the following factors: environmental pollution, sedentary lifestyle, mental and emotional stress, irrational and unbalanced diet, bad habits (smoking, drinking alcohol, drugs). The 2nd group includes genetic risk, that is, hereditary diseases and diseases with a hereditary predisposition.
Among the risk factors, the main place is occupied by psycho-emotional experiences. the body's response to stress can be local or general. It is all the more pronounced, the more vital the stimulus acting on the body is. Under the action of a stressful (extreme) stimulus, the endocrine gland - the pituitary gland - is activated, which at the same time increases the secretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone, which stimulates the activity of the adrenal cortex. Adrenal glands begin to produce a large amount of various hormones in the blood, thanks to which the body adapts (adapts) to new conditions. Under certain conditions, the general adaptation syndrome can cause diseases, because the release of hormones sometimes exceeds the necessary level, which causes harm to the body.
Psychoemotional experiences are the most significant in the occurrence of hypertension, diabetes, bronchial asthma, a number of skin diseases, metabolism, etc., not to mention neuroses, neurosis-like mental disorders.
The impact of bad habits on the human body is negative.
Children of alcoholics often suffer from schizophrenia, are mentally retarded, are born deaf and dumb, and have severe disorders of the endocrine glands.
The influence of alcohol on the course of pregnancy: complicated pregnancy was observed in 28% of cases, and premature - in 34. Violation of the development of the placenta under the influence of alcohol often leads to spontaneous abortions and premature births. Alcoholic women often give birth to dead children with physical deformities.
Children of chronic alcoholics are born frail, with an unstable nervous system; such children are irritable, they have an increased susceptibility to various diseases.
Some mothers drink beer to increase the amount of breast milk. This is very harmful. Alcohol with milk enters the child's blood and causes painful symptoms: excitement, crying, restless sleep. Breastfeeding women should refrain from drinking alcohol.
Based on many years of and numerous observations, scientists have obtained reliable scientific information about the impact of tobacco smoke on the course of pregnancy: dystrophic changes occur in the vascular wall of the arteries and veins of the placenta. Nicotine excites the nervous system. The production of adrenaline, noradrenaline and other biologically active substances such as kinins increases. At the same time, the tone of the uterus increases, in which nicotine accumulates in significant concentrations. The vessels narrow, causing microcirculation disorders in the placenta. As a result, entire areas of the placenta are deprived of blood supply. Less blood flows to the fetus through the narrowed vessels. The supply of oxygen and nutrients deteriorates. This affects the growth and development of the unborn child.
By acting on the sex hormone, nicotine can cause abortion in the first months. The concentration of carbon monoxide in the vessels of the fetus is higher than in a pregnant woman. Nicotine accumulates in organs and tissues and is excreted from the fetus more slowly. Nicotine and its derivatives have a toxic effect on the embryonic development of the fetus. That is why women who smoke are more likely to have premature births, abortions, and have a high percentage of stillbirths and postpartum mortality of newborns.
Children of heavy smokers are prone to convulsions. Such children often have epileptic seizures.
Babies die from the so-called sudden infant death syndrome.
Nicotine and its metabolic products pass into breast milk. 1 liter of milk from a smoking mother contains up to 0.5 mg of nicotine. Meanwhile, the lethal dose of nicotine is 1 mg per 1 kg of the child's weight. Tobacco smoke inhibits the secretion of milk, and sometimes because of this, the baby has to be transferred to artificial feeding.
Many diseases are hereditary. The set of genes, that is, the genotype received from the parents, contains both normal, healthy genes and pathologically altered ones. In addition, changes in genes - mutations - can occur during a person's life. All this represents a genetic risk.
A hereditary disease is most often the result of a case when both practically healthy parents carry the same defect of genetic material in a latent state, which they are unaware of. It is also a coincidence that both genetic disorders are combined in a fertilized egg (zygote), from which the child's body develops. The probability of meeting two carriers of the same genetic disorder is very low. But if this meeting still occurred, and this is usually learned about when a child with a hereditary disease is born, it is necessary to consult a doctor of medical and genetic counseling in order to avoid the further birth of sick children. Medical genetics currently has methods for prenatal diagnosis of about 70 hereditary diseases, which makes it possible to warn parents long before birth that the expected child is sick and to convince them of the advisability of terminating this pregnancy.
Among hereditary diseases, there are chromosomal diseases, hereditary metabolic diseases, immune disorders, diseases with predominant damage to the endocrine and nervous systems, blood diseases, etc.