LETTERS: The 2020 statistics for the top five causes of death in Malaysia are frightening.
They are ischaemic heart disease (17 per cent), pneumonia (11 per cent), cerebrovascular diseases such as stroke (eight per cent), cancer (six per cent) and road accidents (three per cent).
All of these are preventable by simple lifestyle choices. Yet, something mysterious happens to us when we are faced with our own lifestyle and personal habits.
Logic and knowledge have repeatedly failed to assist us in making healthy choices. The unfortunate truth is that even when we are well-informed, we make poor health choices and depend a lot on emotion rather than logic.
Our background and upbringing dictate our choices to a large degree; culture and religious influences also play a role.
For example, men eat differently than women — men tend to select foods based on taste, and women consider the health aspects of food more than men do.
Their comfort foods differ, too. Men's comfort foods tend to be main-dish items like pizza, meat and potatoes.
Women associate main-dish items with cooking and clean-up, which is hardly comforting, so they go for the effortless sweet things like ice cream, cookies or chocolates.
Nobel Prize economist Richard Thaler observed that he and a friend were willing to forgo a drive to a sporting event due to a snowstorm because they had been given free tickets. But had they purchased the tickets themselves, they would have been more inclined to go, even though the danger of driving in the snowstorm remained unchanged.
Another way to look at this is: do we spend RM20 on that fast food meal today and RM2,000 on a coronary stent in five years? Or spend RM5 on organic oats and save the RM2,000 bill for a trip to Bali?
How do we change our behaviour? Here are five strategies:
BE the leader: If you start a daily exercise regime of walking around your block with a couple of friends, in a few weeks, five more friends will join you;
ALTER your peer group: Choose your friends carefully; surround yourself with like-minded shoppers and exercisers. Don't go out with those who laugh at your healthy food choices;
CHANGE your environment: Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and economist, argues in his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow that when we make a choice, we make an emotional one first and later a logical one. If your choice was instinctive, allow your logical mind to speak as well. If the two match up, then your choice is probably the right one.
NO freebies: If we pay for a gym membership, we are more likely to use it; and,
INCENTIVES: In a United States study, one group of employees received up to US$800 over six months if they quit smoking. In another scheme, smokers initially deposited US$150, but if they quit, they got their deposit back along with a US$650 bonus after six months. The result? Those offered the reward programme were far more likely to accept the challenge than those offered the deposit programme.
But the deposit programme was twice as effective at getting people to quit — and five times as effective as pamphlets and nicotine gum.
So put a monetary value on your health. When you put a value on your health choices, maybe your emotional choices will change, too.
DR MADHUMITA SEN
Deputy director, Clinical Skills Centre, Faculty of Medicine, AIMST University
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times