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Along with the increase in population, the number of deaths is also

increasing. Every day there are an enormous number of babies got born, while on

the contrary with that, there is also an enormous number of deaths occur every

day which is a natural phenomenon in this world. Being born and experiencing

death is just a part of our lives as living beings, so it’s not alarming for people to

die. But, now as time passes and our civilization got more improved, the number of

deaths around the world is also increasing along with it, which became an alarming

and a major problem around the world. The mortality rate around the world is

increasing year by year to the point where it passes the usual number of deaths

every year. With that factor in mind, it is given that there are more enormous

numbers of death occurring nowadays than the previous years. What may be the

reason for these situation? That was the usual question asked regarding this topic,

wherein this topic will tackle the one factor that causes this alarming situation.

In the research concluded in the previous studies regarding the causes of

death, it was known that the unhealthy habits that people engaging nowadays are

one of the factors that leads to the increase in the number of deaths around the

world. Unhealthy habits was proven to have a great effect on the body and have

negative effects that may cause diseases or illnesses and may eventually cause

death. Wherein this research will going to determine the relationship between

unhealthy habits towards the human health and mortality rate.

Increasing Mortality and Its Cause

Based on research[1-6], the majority of causes behind the increase in

mortality rate is also the factors that we human does to ourselves. People tend to
do things that may or can cause harm to themselves or others, which may lead to

a person’s death depending on what certain factor is done and how it was handled,

and with the increase in the number of people’s engaging those factors, the

number of death also got increased along with it by a large amount causing the

mortality rate to increase each year.

In previous years the mortality rate among countries is higher than this year,

that was also because of the Covid-19 pandemic which kill a large number of

people around the world. According to the newspaper Expansion, an average of

1231 deaths occurred daily in Spain in the year 2021. Specifically, 449,270 people

died in 2021, 44,506 fewer than in the previous year, with the mortality rate falling

from 10.40‰ to 9.49‰, Santos-Jaén et al. (2022). This given data just shows how

vast the number of deaths that occurred due to the health problem that people

worldwide faced during those times within just one day period in a single country.

Moreover to that, when the whole world is facing these phenomena, the fatalities

that occur all around the world are given to be more numerous than what all the

previous records of deaths around the world. According to Borghi-Silva et al.

(2022) the pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome

coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become a global health crisis, causing the

infection of more than ~275 million people worldwide and more than ~5.5 million

deaths by December 2021.

The increase in mortality rate around the world at those time was due to the

COVID-19 pandemic, which caused an unexpected increase in the number of

deaths around the world, but if people are more responsive to their health, those
fatalities can be prevented or subsided. If people have more immunity to diseases,

the number of deaths that time may decline, but as our food got more improved,

the majority of our population now mainly eats unhealthy foods, which eventually

became a part of their daily food rotational routine, even though these unhealthy

foods have a negative effect to their body and can lessen their immunity.

Eating unhealthy foods is crucial to our health and has great effects on our

body, and engaging in such habits can cause a negative effect on a person’s body,

one of its effects is it can make our immune system low causing our body to be

prone to diseases. If a person has low immunity, that may lead to health problems

or illnesses and if it’s not handled properly, it may lead to death depending on what

diseases a person has. This factor is an example of the factors that we human

does to ourselves that may result in death, but if people can handle those factor

clearly, it will surely lead their body to become more strong and healthy which if it

was done in the last few years it might also prevent the massive loss during the

Covid-19 pandemic.

There are several factors that caused the increasing death rate around the

world, one of these factors is the increasing number of people engaging in

unhealthy habits. The majority of deaths around the world are due to accidents and

diseases, which may be because of unhealthy habits. For the aforementioned

reasons, the usual causes of accidents are because of alcohol and reckless

driving, while the usual causes of diseases are due to drugs, and health

management problems which are both can be classified as unhealthy habits. The

unhealthy habits that people regularly do, either voluntarily or not, have greatly
influenced a person’s life, and engaging in such habits may cause one’s death

depending on how it was handled. Many people around the globe died due to this

factor. The unhealthy habits that are usually connected to drugs, alcohol, smoking,

and eating are the most prominent habits that cause millions of death around the

world every year.

Unhealthy Habits and it’s Effect

In relation to the causes of mortality, according to data from the European

Health Survey for the year 2020, around 50,000 people died in Spain from

smoking-related diseases, some 20,000 died from excessive alcohol consumption,

and almost 55,000 died as a result of physical inactivity, Santos-Jaén et al. (2022).

The data that the European Health surveyed just shows how influential those

unhealthy habits are in terms of our health and in the life of a person, which this

data proves the statement that was stated before that engaging in these unhealthy

habits can cause into a person’s death.

Unhealthy Habits and it’s Regulation Method

In relation to the aforementioned reasons, according to Santos-Jaén et al.

(2022), many researchers have shown great interest in recent decades in

examining which factors reduce mortality rates, and according to their research,

they concluded that the individual healthy lifestyle factors, such as not smoking,

maintaining a healthy weight, moderating alcohol intake, engaging in regular

exercise, and eating a healthy diet all reduce the risk of mortality.
According to Represas-Carrera et al. (2021) the primary care interventions

to change unhealthy life habits have increased in recent years, studies to evaluate

their effectiveness are needed. In practice, the most widespread strategy to bring

about change in conduct is to advise about a single unhealthy habit or risk factor.

Nevertheless, this approach type has a weaker impact on people’s health

compared to interventions that address several unhealthy life habits (multi-risk

approach). Another question lies in the way these life habits are dealt with and,

although individual and group approaches are effective, they are normally

implemented separately.

The combination of several components in a single intervention according to

Represas-Carrera et al. (2021) is what defines “multicomponent interventions”.

Research into the effectiveness of such interventions is ample and varied and has

analyzed several approaches according to the type of intervention and

methodology used to promote health. These kind of interventions performed to

date are not backed by solid evidence for simultaneously dealing with different

unhealthy life habits. Therefore, the multicomponent intervention in the present

study was conducted in PC by focusing on diet, physical activity and smoking to

include individual, group and community components. These three types of

approaches are essentials in any organized program to suitably achieve disease

self-management. In 2012, the Research Network in Preventive and Health

Promotion Activities (redI-APP) started designing a multicomponent intervention in

Spain for people aged 45–75 years to promote healthy life habits to improve

quality of life and avoid high-prevalence chronic diseases


The individual healthy life factors greatly influenced the person’s health in

which engaging in such activity can lessen the probability of having an illness or

diseases that may eventually leads to a person’s death. Therefore to avoid those

kind of health problems, it is necessary to do a prevention method as stated in the

previous studies to avoid health problems related to unhealthy habits.

Mortality In Relation to Smoking

In relation to the topic, according to Represas-Carrera et al. (2021) most

adults present several unhealthy life habits that are interrelated. Galán et al. state

that 20% of the Spanish population adopts three or four unhealthy life habits, and

smoking is the factor that mostly frequently interrelates to the others. The Spanish

population smokes more than average in the European Union despite smokers

and passive smokers being at higher risk of cardiovascular disease, premature

death and microvascular complications.

According to Santos-Jaén et al. (2022) smoking has been identified as the

second leading risk factor for death from all causes worldwide. For this reason,

many researchers have shown interest in this subject. As a result of their research,

it is estimated that up to half of all smokers worldwide die from smoking-related

diseases, mainly from lung cancer.

According to Doll et al. (2004) in research done since 1954, the early

findings had confirmed prospectively the excess of lung cancer among smokers

that had been seen in the retrospective studies. Findings on cause-specific

mortality in relation to smoking were published after four periods of follow-up (after
four years, 10 years, 20 years, and 40 years). The early results from this study,

together with those from several others that began soon after, showed that

smoking was associated with mortality from many different diseases. Indeed,

although smoking was a cause of the large majority of all lung cancer deaths, lung

cancer accounted for less than half of the excess mortality among smokers. With

the passage of time and the maturation among males of the smoking epidemic—

that is, the arrival of a period in which even in old age those who still smoked had,

in general, been smoking cigarettes regularly since youth—the 40 year results

showed that the risks from really persistent cigarette smoking were much larger

than had previously been suspected and suggested that about half of all persistent

cigarette smokers would eventually be killed by their habit. Previous reports of this

and other studies regarding smoking have reviewed the associations of smoking

with many specific causes of death and considered the reasons for them, leading

to the conclusion that in this study the substantial differences between smokers

and non-smokers in overall mortality are due chiefly to the causal effects of

smoking.

Cigarette smoking had become common among young men by the end of

the first world war (1914-1918) and remained so for half a century, reinforced by

the issue of low cost cigarettes to young military conscripts from 1939. As a result,

men who were born in the first, second, and, particularly, the third decade of the

20th century and were still smoking cigarettes after the age of 60 had been

smoking substantial numbers throughout adult life. Those who stopped and those

who continued smoking differed little in obesity and blood pressure and differed
only moderately in mean alcohol consumption. But, although many stopped when

still relatively young and healthy during the 1950s and ’60s, some who stopped in

later middle age did so because they were already ill (Doll et al, 2004). Based on

their findings it is proven that engaging in smoking habits have a huge effect in the

person’s body, and that engaging in smoking can result to illness or diseases that

plausible to cause into the person’s death in a long time consumption.

Smoking is the most preventable cause of premature mortality in the world,

accounting for about six million deaths every year according by Borghi-Silva et al.

2022. But as the people around the world became more and more addicted to

smoking, the prevention of this activity is became nearly impossible resulting to a

large number of deaths occurring due to smoking related diseases.

Mortality in Relation to Physical Inactivity and Alcohol

Similarly in connection to unhealthy habits, according to Santos-Jaén et al.

(2022) physical inactivity and excessive alcohol consumption also increase

mortality rates. Sedentarism has also been established as a major health risk

factor, affecting endothelial function, autonomic function, nitric oxide bioavailability,

and progenitor cell mobilization and leading to heart failure. Consequently, authors

such as Wen et al. (2011) and Belvederi et al. (2020) promote exercise as a key

tool for reducing mortality, as it reduces underlying diseases such as cachexia and

musculoskeletal vascular problems. Excessive alcohol consumption is also

associated with a wide range of chronic and acute negative health outcomes, such

as serious illnesses and traffic accidents, leading to an increased risk of mortality.

Therefore, previous studies made such as those by White et al. (2020) and Probst
et al. (2020) support the need to reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths.

Along this line, an essential part of the measures for reducing mortality is based on

carrying out good preventive measures.

Mortality and Poor Nutritional Habits

In addition to the topics discussed, an essential aspect to be mentioned is

regarding poor nutritional habits. Poor nutritional habits are linked to SB due to the

high level of mental demand associated with increased food intake, suggesting

that this can lead to a positive energy balance and, consequently, overweight and

obesity. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that adults who eat

a healthy diet live longer and have a lower risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2

diabetes, and certain cancers. Healthy eating can help people with chronic

diseases manage these conditions and prevent complication (Borghi-Silva et al,

2022). Moreover, dietary habits were significant predictors of poor hospitalization

outcomes. Thus, nutrients play essential roles in the immune system, therefore an

adequate and balanced intake of nutrients is essential for an immune response.

Good nutrition creates an environment in which the immune system is able to

respond appropriately to inflammatory and infectious processes, such as those

caused by COVID-19. Around the world malnutrition rates have been increasing in

recent years, where the percentage of hungry people has increased from 4.65% in

2013 to 5.5% in 2018. Combined with the potential for lower levels of PA, impaired

nutritional habits could lead to a positive energy balance and weight gain.

In relation to the aforementioned reasons, according to Borghi-Silva et al.

(2022) the consumption of ultra-processed food was also high during this period in
all countries, but their regular use was more prevalent in LA. An excessive amount

of processed food are nowadays taken by people resulting to some health

problems. Therefore, this finding reinforces the importance of developing public

health policies for this group, focusing on measures to encourage a healthy

lifestyle (diet and exercise). Governments need to review policies from a nutritional

and health perspective, for example in the international food trade, foods offered in

schools or workspaces, and facilitate healthy alternatives at affordable prices. As a

result, public policies can reduce hunger, modify food consumption and,

consequently, improve health.

Mortality in Relation to Relative Deprivation

The relative deprivation is one of major causes of deaths, because of this

factor many people got engaged in unhealthy habits either they want it or not.

According to Eibner and Evans (2001) one contentious explanation for differences

is the “relative deprivation” hypothesis, which argues that individuals are adversely

affected when they perceive themselves to be economically deprived relative to

their peers. Low relative income may cause stress and depression, conditions that

may raise the probability of contracting a disease or increase the tendency to

engage in risky behavior. The relative deprivation hypothesis is distinct from more

traditional models that argue an individual’s health is a function solely of his or her

underlying characteristics, such as own income, education, and race. According to

the relative deprivation hypothesis, an individual’s health is also a function of the

incomes of others in her reference group. It’s typically assumed that a person’s

health is negatively related to the income of others, so that as person j becomes


richer, person i’s health deteriorates. Much of the evidence for the relative

deprivation hypothesis comes from studies that link income inequality to population

health. Income inequality can be seen as a proxy for deprivation, in that as

inequality increases, the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” grows, and

the overall deprivation in society increases. However, income inequality could

influence health independently of relative deprivation. At the aggregate level,

measures of inequality seem to be highly correlated with public health indicators

such as mortality rates (Kaplan, et al., 1996; Kawachi, Kennedy and Prothrow-

Stith, 1996; Wilkinson, 1996). That’s why relative deprivation have a great

influence in a persons life regarding in the mortality rate as it was the determining

factor of a person’s choice and depending with that factor a person may or not

engaged in unhealthy habits whether it is a person’s wants or not.

In relation to the relative deprivation according to Eibner and Evans (2001),

Waldmann (1992) finds that, even after controlling for a number of variables, infant

mortality rates are positively related to the share of income going to the rich.

Kaplan et al. (1996) show that U.S. states with greater income inequality

(measured by the percentage of total household income received by the poorest

50 percent) have higher all-cause mortality rates than their more egalitarian

counterparts. In this work, the magnitude of the mortality/inequality correlation is

highest for the 25 to 64 age-group. A similar state-level study by Kennedy,

Kawachi and Prothrow-Stith (1996) examines the relationship between the Robin

Hood index (the share of total income that would have to be taken from those

above the mean and transferred to those below to achieve an equal distribution)
and cause-specific mortality rates. Using regression analysis and controlling for

poverty and smoking rates, Kennedy et al. find statistically significant associations

between the Robin Hood index and all-cause mortality, heart disease mortality,

infant mortality, and homicide rates. Miller and Paxson (2000) regress state-level

log odds of dying on mean income within groups (defined over state, race, sex,

and age) and state mean income. Miller and Paxson find that, even after

controlling for own-group income and other cofactors, state mean income has a

positive, statistically significant coefficient. This result suggests that individuals are

adversely affected when others in their state of residence become more

prosperous. This just proven that the income of a person influence his/her health,

wherein if a person have a low income in relation to relative deprivation that

particular person became prone in engaging unhealthy habits that eventually will

leads to diseases or illnesses because of the person’s feeling inferior to the others.

Whereas also the case in person with greater income as they can easily engage in

risky habits because of their high income capabilities.

Eibner and Evans (2001) suggests that relative deprivation influences

health primarily through psychosocial stress that affects those with low relative

incomes. Individuals who feel they are economically disadvantaged compared to

their peers may be depressed and disgruntled, conditions which affect health both

directly (via heart disease, high blood pressure, and suicide) and indirectly (via

increased smoking, poor eating habits, and alcohol abuse). The relative

deprivation hypothesis is distinct from the absolute income hypothesis in that

individuals with high absolute income can be relatively deprived, as long as their
peers are more well-off than they are. Thus, a lawyer may be wealthy in an

absolute sense, but deprived in a relative sense. That relative deprivation may be

linked to mortality is that individuals who feel deprived may be particularly likely to

engage in health-compromising behaviors, such as smoking. If the link between

behavior and relative deprivation is correct, we would expect relative deprivation to

have an especially pronounced effect on mortality that is strongly linked to

behavior.

According to Eibner and Evans (2001) heart disease (IHD), tobacco-related

cancers, and accidents/external events. All of these causes of death are linked to

behavior, particularly through the use of tobacco and alcohol. Cigarette smoking is

the direct cause of 87 percent of all lung cancer cases, and the surgeon general

calls smoking “the most important of the known modifiable risk factors for coronary

heart disease” (American Heart Association, 2000). Cigarette-smoking is also

linked to cancers of the oral cavity, as is smokeless tobacco. The American

Cancer Society (ACS) estimates that about 90 percent of people with cancers of

the oral cavity and oropharngeal cancers are tobacco users (ACS, 2000). While

moderate alcohol consumption is protective against heart disease, alcohol is

associated with various cancers including cancers of the esophogus, larnyx, and

oral cavity. Moreover, alcohol consumption is associated with motor vehicle

accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports

that drunk driving is responsible for about 39 percent of all traffic fatalities

nationwide (NHTSA, 2000). In relation to relative deprivation the risky behavior

such as mentioned above is link to a person’s felling whereas the person engage
in such behavior as for the factors like in relative deprivation is because of a

problem or situation that affects a person feelings, resulting into the person to

engage in doing unhealthy habits that is possible to cause his/her own death.

Based in the aforementioned studies, it was proven that the unhealthy

habits is one of the major factor that causes diseases or illnesses and death

around the world. Whereas the people who engaged in such given unhealthy

habits are possible to be infected in some major diseases or illnesses that may

leads to their own death. In which the increase in the number of people engaging

in bad habits also effect the number of deaths around the world resulting to the

increase in mortality rate.

Unhealthy Habits is a major factor that influence the increase in the disease

rate and also in mortality rate around the world. Which this habits based on the

study, have greatly contribute to the number of diseases and deaths that was

nearly impossible to get rid as people became accustomed to this kind of habits

nowadays either it was intentional or not.

The study was carried out to explain the relationship between the unhealthy

habits towards the human health and the mortality rate, and it was proven to be

related and have a great influenced to the both factors which based on this study it

was find out that unhealthy habits are also one of the factors that influence to the

increase in health problems and the mortality rate around the world.
References

1. Santos-Jaén, J.M., León-Gómez, A., Martínez, M.d.C.V., et al. (2022). The

Effect of Public Healthcare Expenditure on the Reduction in Mortality Rates

Caused by Unhealthy Habits among the Population. Basel, Switzerland:

MDPI.

2. Eibner, C.E. & Evans, W.N. (2001). Relative Deprivation, Poor Health

Habits and Mortality. United States: Uwpress.

3. Doll, R., Peto, R., Boreham, J., et al. (2004). Mortality in relation to smoking:

50 years’ observations on male British doctors. United Kingdom: BMJ.

4. Donini, L.M., Savina, C., & Cannella, C. (2003). Eating Habits and Appetite

Control in the Elderly: The Anorexia of Aging. Rome, Italy: International

Psychogeriatric Association.

5. Represas-Carrera, F., Couso-Viana, S., Méndez-López, F., et al. (2021).

Effectiveness of a Multicomponent Intervention in Primary Care That

Addresses Patients with Diabetes Mellitus with Two or More Unhealthy

Habits, Such as Diet, Physical Activity or Smoking: Multicenter Randomized

Cluster Trial (EIRA Study). Basel, Switzerland: MDPI.

6. Borghi-Silva, A., Back, G.D., Garcia de Araújo, A.S., et al. (2022). COVID-

19 seen from a syndemic perspective: Impact of unhealthy habits and future

perspectives to combat these negative interactions in Latin America. Latin

America: Elsevier Incorporated.

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