One of the factors affecting the quality of life is the state of somatic health. On the other hand, many people with schizophrenia often smoke, lead a sedentary lifestyle, and are obese. Davy Vankampfort from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and his colleagues recently conducted a study involving several dozen patients with the mental disorder in question and the same number of healthy people, making up the so-called control group.
According to an online publication in the journal Schizophrenia Research on April 15, only excessively high body mass index (BMI) values and lack of physical activity in leisure time had an impact on the quality of life associated with physical health.
Difficulties with exercise and metabolic syndrome did not directly affect the well-being of patients with schizophrenia. These results point to the need for physicians conducting research and rehabilitation of these patients to pay attention to their physical activity.
The predisposition to schizophrenia can be inherited. In the general population, only one percent of people develop the disease in their lifetime, but if one parent has schizophrenia, children have a 10 percent chance of developing the disease—and a 90 percent chance of not getting it.
Causes of schizophrenic disorders
The cause of these disorders is unknown, but there are many hypotheses. The genetic background is taken into account — the genes for schizophrenia are located on chromosomes 6, 8 and 22. Perhaps the reason is changes in the functioning of nerve cells. The virus hypothesis states that infection of the brain with a virus (for example, during fetal development) can have long-term consequences of the disease.
Causes are also seen in microdamages of the nervous system that can occur during fetal development. After all, there are ideas that schizophrenic disorders have psychogenic causes.
According to the psychoanalytic concept, schizophrenia is a return to the narcissistic period of childhood. A new way of understanding the essence of the disease is to consider it as a violation of cognitive functions (that is, generally speaking, thought processes) leading to its disintegration.
Overweight and obesity are inherent problems of people suffering from mental illness, which additionally predisposes to the occurrence of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, cancer and arterial hypertension. Studies show that even people with normal BMI and schizophrenia have higher visceral fat values than controls. It is well known that stressful incidents often precede the onset of schizophrenia. They can act as precipitating events in vulnerable people.
People with schizophrenia often become anxious, irritable, and unable to concentrate before any acute symptoms become apparent. This can cause problems with work or school and worsen relationships. Often, these factors are then blamed for causing the illness, when in fact the illness itself caused the stressful event. Therefore, it is not always clear whether stress is a cause or a result of schizophrenia.