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Being healthy is a concept that has evolved considerably. Our lifestyles, our social relationships and the influence of our environment all play an important role in staying fit.

Good health is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

Sustainable health, or the influence of the environment on health

The current consensus concept goes further, with the concept of “sustainable health”. The current formulation is: “Sustainable health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being achieved and maintained throughout life through healthy, fulfilling and rewarding living conditions and access to appropriate, quality resources used responsibly and efficiently.

In this sense, health is not only related to the quality of the environment at a given moment. Staying fit and healthy depends on the social, economic and cultural conditions that enable people to live in a beneficial (and not just “non-harmful”) environment and to participate in maintaining these favourable conditions in the future for themselves and their descendants.

The environment is important for staying fit

For Hippocrates, in the 5th century BC, illness was already a bodily process under the influence of the air, water and the places where we live, combined with our diet and lifestyle.

Then, in the history of medicine, the influence of the environment on health has sometimes been forgotten, and put in competition with myths or religions. But the environment as a determinant of our health is now coming back in force with epigenetics.

The good health of populations depends strongly on the environment in the broad sense. This also includes the notion of an individual choice, at least in part, within a general framework imposed (exposure to pollutants, living and working conditions, access to preventive health care, to leisure, to culture, etc.).

In recent years, numerous studies have shown the danger of pollution, which is responsible for numerous diseases that greatly reduce life expectancy. In 2017, the British scientific journal The Lancet published a report showing that contamination of the air, but also of water and workplaces, causes 9 million premature deaths each year, i.e. 16% of all deaths in the world. This is three times more deaths than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

The influence of our environment and behaviour on our health

We are living longer, but are we fit and healthy? An estimated 20 million people in France are chronically ill, meaning that they need medical care for more than six months to live.

Why are there so many chronically ill people? Because, in the richest countries, medical progress allows people whose health is seriously impaired (cardiovascular diseases, cancers, hepatitis, diabetes, etc.) to continue to live, sometimes for decades.

Thanks in part to medical progress, the population is now living much longer on average. However, the effects of pollution and harmful lifestyle habits (sedentary lifestyle, smoking, alcohol consumption, overeating, stress) often result in poor health, especially in the second half of life.

Prevention, the key to staying fit and healthy

Some people have seen the human genome as a great book in which everything is written, from the diseases of some to the longevity of others. The reality is that there is more room for prevention.

Only 2% of our genes give specific instructions to the cells in our body how to function. For a long time, the other 98% of the genome was neglected, called junk DNA because we did not understand its purpose.

We now know that this 98% forms the epigenome, which is very sensitive to the environment and is capable of modifying the expression of our genes. It is therefore the conductor of the orchestra and adapts to our behaviour, to the way we eat, exercise and take care of ourselves. This shows the influence of the environment on health.

We inherit our genes for life, but we can change our epigenome. This means that we can prevent the vulnerabilities we inherited from our parents and build better health throughout our lives!