The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

What's behind your poor health? Life versus Lifestyle Issues?

One of the things I love about our success stories is the far-reaching impact of people's health transformations.

They lose weight, or in some instances, gain it in muscle mass.

They get fit.

They get their basic health in order, and the physical vitality takes on a life of its own

with an unforeseen carryover effect, leaving them happier, more confident, and newly inspired

to pursue other personal goals or productive changes in their lives. This got me thinking

about how much the opposite holds true. What about the studies that tell us

negative circumstances in our lives become risk factors for a variety of serious health issues,

including mortality risk itself? The thing is, we focus a great deal on the proximate causes

of obesity and lifestyle disease, such as what people eat,

how much they eat, what metabolic issues come into play, but sometimes the actual headspring

could be considered life, rather than lifestyle issues, negative relationships, family dynamics,

or job situations, etc. that admittedly don't force people

toward unhealthy behaviors, but leave too many of them groping for these as coping mechanisms.

From there, the spiral begins. This isn't to oversimplify the situation or deny individuals' responsibility for their own choices,

but it raises a legitimate question.

To what extent can getting our lives in order open the door to better health?

We see the headlines on a regular basis linking negative life circumstances or poor quality of

relationships to poor health.

The latest this week connected the ambivalent marriage in which negative interchange is frequent

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