chapters 1-3

Chapter 1

The book talks about influencing your health with behaviors you can control outside of your genetics. Exercise and eating correctly can influence your health tremendously along with not consuming mass amounts of alcohol and smoking. Excessive alcohol consumption can lead to many different diseases and be very life threating as it is like poison to the body when drank extremely or for the wrong reasons such as filling a void or because you are sad and think it will numb the pain. Smoking is also detrimental to one’s health and can cause many different cancers along with cardiovascular diseases. It also talks about factors you cannot control such as social factors which is more so about where you live and how often you are around crime and how well you get paid to afford a healthier lifestyle. These are things you can’t control as well and so we need to be able to help ourselves become healthier as much as possible.

Another thing from chapter one is taking action to improving your behavior from visualizing how you want to change, to taking steps to implement better behavior. Start with thinking about how you want to be then take control of the situation and try and combat the bad behavior you’re trying to change about yourself. For myself it would be smoking and I’ve taken action into changing my behavior by leaving my vape at home for long periods of time during the day. You MUST change the way you talk to yourself if you want to see results because it is necessary for a healthy outlook of yourself and must be able to reward yourself when doing these steps.

This sticks out to me because it links with my own health aspect for trying to quit smoking and eat healthier. As of right now I have been able to cut back on smoking and its been very hard to do so, I use a plan everyday where I leave my vape at home when I go to work so I can only use it at night and the morning which is helping me to have more energy and feel healthier in the daytime. If I don’t leave it at home I will use it non stop throughout the day. I am also starting to eat healthier by cutting out fast food and soda which is a good start instead for lunches at work I will eat a tuna packet instead of going to mcdonalds. Just by doing this I have been able to lose 15 lbs in two and a half weeks.

Chapter 2

Your Psychological health is extremely important and to keep it or get it healthy comes by having a strong support group that you can trust and also having good self-esteem contributes to a strong psychological health. A big part of having a good psychological health is separating yourself from bad people who are trying to hurt you instead of help you, such as a dysfunctional family. This can be extremely hard to separate from because it is easy to feel obligated to stay connected to them since they are your family or you think they are your friends but if it is unhealthy then it is needed to get away from those people. Another thing this chapter talked about is when the psychological health deteriorates it can cause mental illnesses. These illnesses mess with our mental health and cause people to feel alone and hopeless which lead to other disorders such as depression or anxiety. About 1 in 5 people from the age 18 and up can be diagnosted with a mental disorder. This fascinates me because I had no idea about a fifth of Americans had mental disorders.

Chapter 3

Stress is a big health issue that effects everyone because we all get stressed during our lives. Stress can be caused by many different things external sources, internal sources, just having a bad day and can put our health at risk if we are stressed too often. Stress is not good for our hearts and can cause cardiovascular diseases over time I know this because ive seen it first hand with my father. He owns a small business and hes always working which causes him stress because the employees are not doing things they should be doing which caused him to have a heart attack about 8 years ago when he was only 47. That is young to have a heart attack and the doctors said it was stress induced and told him he needs to keep his stress in check or next time he might not be so lucky to be going home after. That is an example of an external source that causes stress and it just shows how dangerous mass amounts of stress can be. A great thing the chapter discussed was how to manage your stress and relax through it by decompressing by doing yoga, or deep breathing exercises, Qigong, Tai Chi and meditation. It is important to decompress when you are stressed so you can have a clear mind and keep yourself healthy. Yoga and meditation go hand in hand together and can really help when trying to relax and you get deep stretching in and breathing along with exercise that will help your heart.

This doesn’t really go with my health aspects but it is something I am trying to work on for I am always stressed from working 60 hour weeks, juggling school with those weeks and having time for my family and girlfriend its not easy. But I am trying to control my stress by doing yoga when I get home from work right before I go to bed to get some exercise in along with making me more tired to sleep easier since stress can keep you awake.