Physical Health Promotion through Modern Technologies: Challenges to Concerns

1.1 Life Style and Health

Quality of Life as individuals’ perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns. It is a broad ranging concept affected in a complex way by the person’s physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and their relationship to salient features of their environment (De Vries & Van Heck, 1997).The significance of quality of life and well-being as a public health concern is not new. Since 1949, the World Health Organization (WHO) has noted that health is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely an absence of disease and infirmity” (WHO, 1946). Life expectancy and causes of death have traditionally been used as key indicators of population health. While these indicators provide critical information about the health status of populations, they do not offer any information about the quality of the physical, mental, and social domains of life. Increasing life expectancy has also highlighted the need for other measures of health; especially those that capture the quality of the years lived. In 2005, WHO recognized the importance of evaluating and improving people’s quality of life in a position paper (WHOQOL, 2005). Because people are living longer than ever before, researchers have changed the way they examine health, looking beyond causes of death and morbidity to examine the relationship of health to the quality of an individual life. By selecting a lifestyle, an individual tries to maintain and promote his/her health and avoid diseases through having a proper diet, rest/activity, exercising, controlling body weight, not smoking and drinking alcohol and immunizing body against diseases; this set of activities constitutes the lifestyle. Health requires promoting healthy lifestyle (Tol, Tavassoli, Shariferad, & Shojaeezadeh, 2013). It is essential to promote and correct lifestyle in order to maintain and promote health. Promoting health and providing public health are of the most important bases for the development of communities (Seyed Nozadi, 2002).