Chapter 1 Taking Charge of Your Health PDF

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Chapter 1: Taking Charge of Your Health Wellness As a Health Goal - Health: Refers to overall condition of a person’s body or mInd and the presence or absence of illness or injury - Determined or influenced by factors we cannot control - Wellness: Expands the idea of health and focuses on optimal health and vitality, encompassing all the dimensions of well-being - Determined by the conscious decisions we make about how we live - Risk Factors: Condition that increases your chances of diseases or injury Dimensions of Wellness - Physical Wellness: Includes more than the body’s overall condition (such as absence of disease) but also your fitness level and ability to care for yourself - Develop ability to care for your physical needs or higher fitness levels → Ensure greater physical wellness - Emotional Wellness: Focuses on trust, self-confidence, optimism, satisfaction,relationships, etc. - This is dynamic, meaning is has emotional highs and lows - Includes self-acceptance (personal satisfaction with yourself, excluding societies expectations) and selfesteem (the way you think others perceive you) - Intellectual Wellness: Focuses on continually challenging the mind and never stop learning - Interpersonal Wellness: Satisfying and supportive relationships - Requires participating in and contributing to your community and society - Cultural Wellness: The way in which you interact with others who are different from you in terms of ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. - Involves creating a relationship with others and suspending judgement until you have lived with them - Spiritual Wellness: Set of guiding beliefs, principles, or values that give meaning and purpose to your life - This can be an antidote for negative feelings and doesn’t always come in the form of religion - Environmental Wellness: Defined by livability of your surroundings which can support or diminish your wellness - Learning about and protecting yourself against hazards in your surroundings/ work can make your world a cleaner and safer place - Financial Wellness: Ability to live within your means and manage your money in a way that gives you piece of mind - Occupational Wellness: Level of happiness and fulfillment you gain through work - Examples → Enjoy where you work, connections with the others around you, recognition for managers/ colleagues New Opportunities for Taking Change - Morbidity Rate: Relative incidence of disease among a population - Mortality Rate: Number of deaths in a population in a given period; usually expressed as a ratio - Infectious Disease: Disease that can spread from person to person, caused by microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses - Life Expectancy: Period of time a member of a given population is expected to live - By 1980 this doubled due to the development of vaccines and antibiotics - Despite this increase, poor health will limit most American’s activities during the last 15% of their lives - Impaired Life: Period of person’s life when he or she may not be able to function fully due to disease or disability - Three leading causes of death in America are heart disease, cancer, and chronic lower respiratory

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diseases - Obesity epidemic began in the late 1970s and has created predictions that life expectancy will decline in the next years to come Chronic Diseases: Disease that develops and continues over a long period - People make choices every day that increase or decrease their risks for such diseases Lifestyle Choices: Conscious behavior that can increase or decrease a person’s risk of disease or injury - The need to make good choices is especially high for teens and young adults

Promoting National Health - Health Promotion: Process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health → Government/ Community Level - Poor health drains nation’s resources and raises the cost for health care for everyone involved - Federal Level Help: National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) - Health care improves both quality and quantity of life through preventive care/ treatment of disease - Inadequate access is tied to factors like low income or geographic location - The Affordable Care Act (ACA): Created by Obama, this requires most people to obtain health insurance or pay a federal penalty - With the ACA → - Health insurance marketplaces facilitate the purchase of health insurance in every state - If someone is below the income requirements, they are eligible for federal help - Students can stay on their parent’s health insurance plans until the age of 26 - Another option is Medicaid: Individuals with nonimmigrant status, which includes workers visas, quality for insurance coverage through the exchanges - Healthy People Initiative: Aims to prevent disease and improve America's quality of life by setting the standard for various health goals→ Published every decade since 1980 - Tracks health status and behaviors in relation to a number of demographic dimensions - Health Disparities: Health difference linked to social, economic, or environmental disadvantages that adversely affects a group of people - Examples include race/ ethnicity, sex/ gender, income/ education, disability, and geographic location Factors that Influence Wellness - Optimal health and wellness come mostly from a health lifestyle → patterns of behavior ath promote and support your health and promote wellness as you get older - Research continually reveals new connections between habits and health - Genome: Complete set of genetic material in an individual cell (25,000 genes with half from each parent) - Varies slightly from person to person and many of the differences don’t affect health - Gene: Basic unit of heredity, containing chemical instructions for producing a specific proteins (which serve for structural material and regulars of chemical reactions) - Errors in the genes are responsible for 3,500 hereditary conditions - However these genetic alterations serve only to increase an individual’s risk and the disease itself results from interaction with many genes with other factors - Environment: Includes substances and conditions in the home, workplace, and community - Personal Health Behaviors: You can also take an active role in improving your environment. - These behaviors can make a difference in how great an impact heredity/environment have on your health

Reaching Wellness Through Lifestyle Management - Behavior Change: Lifestyle management process that involves cultivating healthy behaviors and working to overcome unhealthy ones - Changing an unhealthy habit can be harder than it sounds and may seem like too much work at originally. However as you progress, you gain confidence and it gets easier - Many people consider changing a behavior when a friend/ family member express concern during a landmark event or when new information arises - Target Behavior: Isolated behavior selected as the object for a behavior change program - Once you choose a target behavior, learn the risks and benefits - Starting small when changing behaviors and working hard to achieve will make you more likely to succeed → Success chances are higher if you being small - Knowledge is necessary for behavior change, but isn’t usually enough to make people act - Typically true for young adults who feel healthy despite their unhealthy habits - Believe the benefits of change outweigh the costs - Examine the pros and cons → Focus on the effects that are most meaningful to you - Short term benefits of behavior change can be an important motivating force - Self-Efficacy: Belief in your ability to take action and perform a specific task - Locus of Control: Extent to which a person believe he or she has control over the events in his or her own life - External Locus of Control: People who believe factors beyond their control determine the course of their lives - Internal Locus of Control: People who believe they are in control of their lives - Internal is advantage in lifestyle management since it reinforces motivation/ commitment while external can sabotage your efforts to change behavior - The best way to boost your confidence and self-efficacy is to visualize yourself successfully, engaging in a new and healthier behavior - Self Talk: Internal dialogue you carry on within yourself, to increase your confidence in your ability to change - Social support can make a big difference in you level of motivation and your chances of success - Don’t let past failures at behaviors change or discourage you → Make a list of various problems you have faced so you know what to watch for - Transtheoretical ‘Stages of Change Model’: - Determine what stage you are in now so you can choose appropriate strategies to progress through the cycle - Precontemplation: When you think you have no problem and do not intend to change your behavior - To move forward in this stage, you need to become more aware - Contemplation: Once you realize you have a problem, you intend to make a change within six months - Preparation: You plan to take action within a month and may have already begun making small behavior changes - The key is to take small steps - Action: You outwardly modify your behavior and environment. - This stage requires the most commitment of time and energy - Reward yourself → Praise yourself for your success by having a pre planned ‘treat’ that doesn’t involve food - Maintenance: You have maintained your new, healthier lifestyle for at least 6 months

Termination:Exited the cycle of change and are no longer tempted to lapse back into your old behavior - People do not follow this in a straightforward pattern, rather they will slip back from a previous stage before moving forward - Plan for relapse so you avoid guilt and self blame Developing Skills for Change: Creating a Personalized Plan - 1. Monitor your Behavior and Gather Data: Keep a record of your target behavior and the circumstances surrounding it - 2. Analyze the Data and Identify Patterns - 3. Be ‘SMART’ about Setting Goals: If your goals are too challenging, you will have trouble making progress and most likely give up all together - Specific: Avoid vague goals - Measurable: Recognize that progress will be easier to track if your goals are quantifiable,so give yourself a number goal - Attainable: Set goals that are within your physical limits - Realistic: Manage your expectations when you set goals Time-frame specific: Give yourself a reasonable amount of time to reach your goal - 4. Devise a Plan of Action: Develop a strategy that will support your efforts to change - Could possibly include: Get what you need, modify your environment, control related habits, reward yourself, involve people around you, and plan for challenges - 5. Make a Personal Contract: One that commits you to your world can result in a better change of following through than a offhand promise - Stick to your plan despite the temptations that you encounter → Remember all the reasons you want to change -

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