A communicable disease is one that is spread from person to person. In terms of lifestyle factors, communicability can be defined as the direct influence of an individual on another individual in the change or persistence of a lifestyle factor. Therefore, the influence of environment, such as seasonal changes, marketability, industrial revolution etc. cannot be taken into account when discussing communicability. Generally, I think dietary changes, lack of physical activity, automobile related issues, smoking, stress and urbanization are all communicable to some extent, depending on how much the environmental factors affect each of the lifestyle factors.

Dietary changes is complicated because a lot of factors come into play, especially the availability and pricing of food, and research on healthy and harmful foods. These factors are not directly ‘spread by people’, but rather indirect environmental factors. However, family and physician influences, and peer pressure from friends play a major part in the communicability of dietary changes. For example, research shows that kids are more likely to follow the lifestyle of their parents, which includes diet. Physicians prescribing a certain diet to an individual is likely to result in a change in diet of that person out of concern for health. Also, if most of John’s friends start eating salads when they eat dinner together, then John is more likely to change his diet and start eating salads gradually.

Lack of physical activity is more communicable, especially between family members, as other factors such as marketability, pricing etc. doesn’t come into play. Current research suggest a strong correlation between physical inactivity of parents and the physical inactivity of children, and vice versa. Physicians play a crucial influence on decreasing physical inactivity among individuals. Peer pressure from friends can also make someone more physically active, although the reverse is not necessarily true.

Smoking is the most communicable of all of the factors mentioned above. Peer pressure is one of the biggest influence in smoking, as an individual with friends who are regular smokers is more likely to smoke than an individual who doesn’t have friends who smoke. Companies who provide alternatives for smoking such as skin patches and e-cigarettes have definitely influenced the choice of individuals to leave smoking, although it is unclear as to whether these alternatives are considered smoking or not.

Stress is much less communicable compared to the other factors. Stress is mainly caused by external factors such as exams, interviews, death of closed ones, deadlines etc. and is not really caused by a direct influence of people. Automobile related issues, such as greenhouse gas emission, pollution and car accidents, are not directly influenced by people much and are heavily dependent on external circumstances. However, car manufacturers producing certain types of cars like hybrid cars or electric cars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can be considered communicable.

Urbanization is similar to smoking in terms of communicability, especially and mostly among family members. Family members who move from rural to urban areas in search of better opportunities usually settles themselves and tries to bring the rest of their family into the urban area either for company or for the other family members to take advantage of the opportunities in the urban area. When discussing the influence of friends, physicians or other people of the community on an individual, urbanization is not very communicable in this case.