Lesson 3: Health Risks & Your Behavior

1. Lesson 3: Health Risks & Your Behavior

2. Warm up • List some healthful behaviors you already practice. What healthful behaviors would you like to add to your life?

3. Behaviors • Behavior • The way you act or choose to act in a situation. • Behaviors can be healthful, or they can put you or others at risk. • They can be learned and become habit. • Healthful behaviors • Behaviors that promote health, prevent injury and premature death, and improve the quality of the environment. • It is more beneficial to your health status to learn and practice healthful behaviors.

4. Identifying Health Risks • Every day you are faced with some degree of risk. • Simple events such as crossing a street or using electrical appliances, carry a degree of risk. • Risk behaviors – actions that can potentially threaten your health or the health of others. • It is important to recognize that you can control most risk behaviors. • By understanding the risks associated with certain behaviors, you can make safe and responsible decisions about which risks to avoid.

5. Recognizing Risk Behaviors • The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has identified six risk behaviors that account for most of the deaths and disability among young people under age 24. • These risk factors can lead to heart disease, cancer, and other serious illnesses later in life: • Tobacco use • Unhealthy dietary behaviors • Inadequate physical activity • Alcohol and other drug use • Sexual behaviors that may result in STD’s and unintended pregnancies • Behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence.

6. Risks and Consequences • Risk behaviors carry significant consequences. Both the short-term and long-term consequences can harm your health. • Before you engage in risk behaviors, it’s important to evaluate the consequences. • For example, smoking can have immediate health consequences, such as bad breath, yellow teeth, and headaches. The long-term consequences of smoking can include lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. • Risks can add up over time. Cumulative risks are related risks that increase in effect with each added risk. • For example, eating an occasional high-fat meal at a fast food restaurant probably won’t permanently affect your overall health. However, if you regularly eat high-fat meals, the negative affects accumulate and could lead to serious health problems.

7. Risks & Consequences • Cumulative risks also increase when several risk factors are combined. • For example, using a cell phone while driving carries risks. So does speeding. If an individual engages in both of these risk behaviors, the chance of getting into a car accident becomes even greater.

8. How to Avoid or Reduce Risks • You can take action to reduce your exposure to health risks. • You can reduce health risks through prevention: • Taking steps to keep something from happening or getting worse. • For example, getting regular medical exams and dental checkups.

9. How to Avoid or Reduce Risks • You can also reduce health risks through abstinence: • A deliberate decision to avoid high-risk behaviors, including sexual activity and the use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. • All areas of your health triangle benefit when you prevent and abstain from high risk behaviors. • You protect yourself from injury and chronic diseases, you feel good about yourself, which strengthens your mental/emotional health and social relationships.

10. Top Ten Teen Risk Behaviors • Alcohol • Tobacco • STD’s • Obesity • Depression • Eating Disorders • Drug Abuse • Teen Pregnancy • Anemia • Diabetes

11. WAKE UP

12. Where do you stand in terms of your healthful behavior? • Health Behavior Inventory • Each of you will assess your present health status in 10 categories described by current research. • Because the assessment is 100 questions, it is fairly accurate. The more elements an assessment has the more accurate it is likely to be. • The most comprehensive medical evaluations include 600 or more questions. • This health appraisal uses several questions from other appraisals and simplifies them.

13. Total Health Assessments • Take your time and be honest. • At the end of each section you should tally your score in that particular section. • At the end of the assessment, create a bar graph and graph your scores. • The idea behind the graph is to see whether any area of your health is greatly out of alignment with the others. • Balance in all areas of health is the ultimate goal. • After you finish assessment and graph, write your two highest scores and your two lowest scores on the board so that we can get a general appraisal of the health of the class.

14. Total Health Assessment Graph Example

15. Health Behavior Contract • A written plan that a person makes to develop the habit of practicing a specific healthful behavior. 5 steps to follow: • Write your name and the date. • Write the healthful behavior you want to practice as a health goal. • Write specific statements that describe how the healthful behavior reduces health risks. • Make a specific plan for recording your progress. • Complete the evaluation of how the plan helped you accomplish the health goal.

16. REMINDER: Random binder checks; make sure your binder is organized!! Turn in syllabus if you have not already done so! Reminder