CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
The increase in the number of people who are ill in the various health establishments has risen geometrically overtime. Most of these illnesses may be as a result of unhealthy lifestyles and habits. Amongst this various unhealthy lifestyles and habits are smoking, lacks of exercise, weight, poor dietary just to mention but a few. In Nigeria specifically, a lot has been said about smoking and lack of exercise. Smokers as they say are liable to die young, though a lot of publicity has gone out to this regard, most smokers have rather not taken heed to this meaning but have rather seen it as a normal jingle without really pondering over it them to make changes in their life styles and bad habits.
Lack of exercise “as deadly as smoking” is now causing as many deaths as smoking in Nigeria and across the world.This has also contributed to the unprecedented rise in illness across Nigeria.
Strong evidence shows that lack of exercise which leads to physical inactivity increases the risk of many major adverse health conditions including:
Death (from any cause), coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, metabolic syndrome (including obesity and abnormal blood cholesterol levels), breast and colon cancer, depression etc.
It estimated that overall, physical inactivity which is caused by lack of exercise caused more than 5.3 million of the 57 million deaths that occurred worldwide in 2008 which Nigeria is not excluded. The researchers suggest this is equivalent to the 5 million deaths attributed to smoking in 2000 (Kingsley 2012: 42).
It is generally believed that a regular exercise helps to
reduce the risk of falling ill
controls your weight
Improve your mental health and mood
 Improve your ability to do daily activities
Increase your chances of liing longer etc
There may also be a relationship between the weight of a person and the propensity to fall ill. This study helps to explore those unique relationship between the various parameters mentioned earlier in this study.
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study
The following are the objectives of the study:
To know if there is a relationship between smokers and their weight.
To study the impact of smoking and lack of exercise on health conditions of patients.
To know the nature of relationship between smoking, weight, level of exercise on the medical cost of patients.
To study the relationship between weight and health care cost of patients.