Can Healthy Lifestyles Help Reduce Physical Trauma?

Abstract

Introduction: Injuries are a leading cause of death in young people. Trauma is responsible for many hospital visits and ranks high in the category of years of potential life lost. There are significant productivity losses due to disability. Traumatic injuries may occur due to motor-vehicle accidents, falls, fires, drowning, suicide and violence. Unintentional injuries at work, and trauma related to wars and climate related events may also occur. Healthy lifestyles have been associated in a major reduction in chronic diseases and an increase in longevity. Their role in preventing trauma is not well known. Methods: An electronic search was done of three databases, Pub Med, EMBASE and Google Scholar. Articles were check for ‘trauma’, ‘injuries’, and lifestyle’ – ‘smoking’, ‘alcohol consumption’, ‘obesity’, ‘physical activity’ and ‘diet’. The inclusion criteria were all types of articles, articles published in Pub Med, and related to humans. The exclusion criteria were articles for which full text was not available, were not in English, or were grey literature. From the articles retrieved in the first round of search, additional references were identified by a manual search among the cited references Results: A review of several hundred articles (1990-2020) on the interaction of lifestyles and trauma was done. A narrative review of the literature was structured. Conclusion: Unhealthy lifestyles, such as smoking, alcohol ingestion in excess, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical exercise, and an unbalanced diet increase the risk of traumatic injuries. They are also associated with delayed healing, increased mortality, and a high socio-economic burden. Problem: Despite better availability of trauma response, emergency care and advanced treatment modalities, the scourge of injuries continue to rise globally. Little attention has been given to the beneficial ‘preventive’ effect associated with healthy lifestyle behaviors. Objectives: This manuscript looks at the scientific evidence to verify that unhealthy lifestyles increase the risk and severity of traumatic injuries. Recommendations: Leading healthy lifestyles reduces the risk of traumatic injury and its negative consequences.