I’m an admirer of Wade Meredith’s writings at Healthbolt.net and after reading his post on How to Give Yourself Diabetes, I realized that sarcasm makes it easier to reach people with important messages.

Now, I’d like to provide a list of tips not just how to get sick, but how to get even a serious disease.

1. Forget about sport! 30 minutes of walking takes too much time, and we can’t do exercises 5-6 times a week. Physically inactive people are more likely to die early, to experience major illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and to get banal infections. So enjoy your favourite armchair and watch the TV!

2. Get fat! If your body mass index (kg/m2) is at least equal to or more than 25, then you’re on the right way towards cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders and some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon). 1.6 million people can’t be wrong!

3. Drink alcohol! There are about 2 billion people worldwide who consume alcoholic beverages and 76.3 million with diagnosable alcohol use disorders. These numbers are still too low, please help improving them! Drink, drink and you can get closer to oesophageal cancer, liver cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, homicide, epileptic seizures and motor vehicle accidents.

Source

4. Smoke! Some cigarettes a day, and you can send the doctor away. The list of the possible effects of smoking is so exciting: cancers of the bladder, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx (voice box), esophagus, cervix, kidney, lung, pancreas, and stomach. I nearly forgot about cardiovascular diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (the fourth leading cause of death in the USA).

Source

5. Sunbathe! Chronic exposure to UV radiation causes erythema, sunburn or even melanoma, one of the deadliest diseases of the world. Try it! An easy and cheap method to suffer.

6. Use more salt! More than 5 g salt a day and you don’t have to worry about high blood pressure. “It has been calculated that a 3g reduction in salt intake in the adult population would lead to a 22% reduction in stroke and a 16% reduction in chronic heart disease.” It means that a daily 15 g salt intake would lead to serious results…

Source

7. Stay stressed! Is your work boring? Are you in a middle of a traffic jam? Try to stay tensed as the stress ulcus is the best friend of the stomach. The pain, the bleeding and the acid in your oesophagus shouldn’t make you interested. Oh, and depression, burnout syndrome are also in the packet.

Source

8. Don’t wash yourself! Improper hygiene can lead to problems like dental caries, fungal infections, parasites and it’s even helpful in transmitting HPV (keyplayer in the cancer of the cervix) and other sexually transmitted infections.

Source

9. Inherit bad genes! You obviously can’t control it. But if you would at least take a deeper look at your family history, you could try to prevent some kind of diseases (e.g.: gout or diabetes type II. with proper diet). So forget about it! Don’t let enthusiastic geneticists force you to think differently!

Source

10. Be creative! Travel to tropical countries (for malaria, tuberculosis and other hot diseases); don’t care about ticks (Lyme disease); do not eat vegetables and fruits (for colon cancer); work in a polluted place and especially think negative! It will definitely help.

I can write hundreds of posts here about web 2.0 and medicine (medicine 2.0, if you happen not to know about it) or genetic testing. But medicine starts at home. In many areas of medicine, we can’t control anything so at least we should take care about what we can take care about.

You can’t control the car rushing towards you without brake, but at least you can move two steps backward.

Source