About half of Portugal’s adult population has two or more health problems as a result of screen overexposure, poor sleep quality and “stress,” according to a study from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Porto, published this Monday.
Published in the scientific journal BMC Public Health, the FMUP study showed that the risk of multimorbidity (having two or more health problems) in a person increases by 4% per year.
Among the most common health problems are joint bone pain, hypertension, diabetes, heart problems, asthma and cancer, the study highlights.
The authors of the study, Rosalia Easter, Andrea Teixeira, Hugo Monteiro, Filipe Prazeres and Carlos Martins, considered multimorbidity in Portugal to be “excessive” and pointed out the need to optimize the prevention of noncommunicable diseases in order to improve the health of the population.
To get this data, the researchers examined 891 people over the age of 20 and found that nearly half of them had two or more underlying health problems.
The results showed that 21.1% of respondents had two health problems, 12.1% three, 7.7% four and 8% five or more.
“This is a recognized fundamental public health issue as we are talking about situations of increased healthcare needs, which ultimately leads to increased workload at the health service level,” said Rosalia Easter, FMUP Professor and Fellow at the Center for Medical Technology and Services Research. (CINTESIS).
In this paper, in which researchers analyzed the prevalence of polymorbidity in Portugal and its association with lifestyle and sociodemographic factors, it was concluded that excessive screen time and poor sleep quality are associated with the risk of an increased risk of developing two or more more diseases as well as high levels of stress.
In terms of smoking habits, participants who quit smoking more than a year ago had a 91% increased risk of multimorbidity compared to those who never smoked.
According to the authors, a possible interpretation “may be due to the fact that most smokers stop smoking only after they are diagnosed with health problems.”
Therefore, the researchers emphasized that the path to a healthy life would be through healthy habits such as smoking cessation, good sleep quality, moderate screen exposure, and adequate stress management, factors that have the greatest impact on multimorbidity.
Author: Portuguese and AB
Source: CM Jornal
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