HOPE—Semester A (H)

Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 1.02: What Is Health and Wellness?

Allow us to slow our roll. We've been hailing the benefits of exercise and health, but we haven't defined those terms for you. How dare we?

Cuddling bunnies counts, too.
(Source)

Let's start with health, since it's kind of the big kahuna of this course. In a nutshell, health refers to the well-being of your body, mind, and social relationships.

If that definition sounds broader than you expected, you're not alone. Health used to only refer to illness—if you were healthy you weren't sick, and if you weren't healthy, you were sick or ill.

As medical knowledge improved, we realized that prevention of disease was as important as treating it. This expanded the meaning of health to include wellness.

Wellness refers to you maintaining a state of health in all areas of your life—not only with physical fitness but with the emotional, social, intellectual, and physical areas of your life. And unless you're the human version of Eeyore, wellness is something we all want.

We can assess health in a few different ways. Physical health involves the current state of your body. Are you sick? How's your cholesterol level? Keeping our bodies in tip-top shape is important because our heart, lungs, brain, nerves, muscles, etc., uh, literally keep us alive.

But health isn't all about bodies. Maintaining mental and emotional health is also essential. No matter how many laps we can swim or run, if we're in a chronic state of despair, we certainly would not classify as "healthy."

Lastly, we've got social health. Unlike your cat who's hissing champion of the world, humans are social beings. Sure, people need their alone time, and some need more of it than others, but every single person requires human interaction in order to stay happy and healthy. Building relationships with people who'll support us in times of stress and anxiety is a pretty big deal. And hey, we all need hugs every once in awhile, right?

Now how 'bout a hug?

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.02a: Follow the Rainbow

Pass or fail, win or lose, hot or not...thankfully none of these dichotomies apply to health.

There's a difference between being healthy and unhealthy, but you're not necessarily one or the other. Just like with your fitness level, health is a continuum, or a spectrum, which might range from "really, really unhealthy" to "gonna live to 120."

Since you're going to want to take notes on all this, download a copy of our notetaking worksheet—on a scale of 1-10 on a continuum, we'd put getting notes down at an 11.

On one end of the health continuum, we've got the conditions necessary for optimal health and wellness. On the other end of the continuum are the habits and behaviors that lead to extremely bad health.

By assessing where we are on the continuum, we can identify how we're harming our health and how we could work to improve it. Things we've got to consider are:

• The physical: are our bodies functioning at peak performance?
• The spiritual: what's the quality of our inner spiritual element (which includes not just faith, but also values, beliefs, ideals, etc.)?
• The intellectual: how often do we seek growth and learning in all areas of our lives?
• The emotional: how well do we handle stress, joy, fear, etc.?
• The social: do we have meaningful relationships with others who are around us?

Reflecting on these questions and how well we're doing with factor tells us how healthy or unhealthy we are. If we identify the factors that could use some TLC, we can work on those things and improve our general wellbeing.

All of these factors when added together affect our life expectancy, the number of years we're statistically expected to live at any given age.

Life expectancy varies by culture, location, social class, and gender (women tend to live longer than men—sorry, boys). It also has to do with more personal factors like diet, exercise patterns, stress levels, and accessibility to medical care. That means, there are things you can do to extend your life expectancy.

Human beings have been living longer than ever before due to cultural adaptations and modern technology. Oh, and public health measures and sanitation. Can you imagine what medical care was like before modern surgical tools and techniques were invented? And don't even think about life before the sewage system. And you think city streets smell bad now....

In America, the current average life expectancy is 78.6 years. That's a good amount of time to accomplish whatever you want to do—raise a family, start a company, discover alien life, rule the world—whatever's on your bucket list. So it's probably a good idea to avoid habits that'll send us toward an early grave.

Here's a cheat sheet of how certain habits and characteristics can increase or decrease our expected life spans:

We'll take one ticket to Monaco, please!
(Source)

• Being overweight by at least 20 pounds: -3 years
• Being poor: -5 years
• Watching 6+ hours of TV per day: -5 years
• Smoking a pack a day: -10 years
• Eating a cup of veggies a day: +2 years
• Flossing daily: +4 years
• Managing stress: +4 years
• Maintaining a strong social network: +7 years
• Being wealthy enough to live in Monaco: +14 years

Unfortunately, most of us will never have enough dough to live in Monaco. Even more unfortunately, most of the world's population does not have access to the conditions necessary for a long, healthy life expectancy. Governments, health organizations, charity operations, and others track people's quality of life in order to determine how people's basic needs are being met around the world. This measure focuses on the impact that health status has on daily life and assesses positive aspects like happy emotions and life satisfaction. Makes us pretty grateful for the health we have; all 78.6 years of it.

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.02b: Genes Only Define Your Waist

Get it? We said genes instead of jeans!

So it wasn't funny. We were just hoping to lighten the mood after ending that last reading on a bummer note about low quality of life.

The point is that you may be thinking that this is all a waste of time, that since your parents are overweight and your grandpa died of heart disease, then you will too.

Yeah, the genes we inherit from our parents do define certain things about us, like body shape and skin tone. They also make us susceptible to a number of diseases or conditions. But genetics isn't the end all, be all when it comes to health.

A bunch of different variables affect how we act, and how we look, and how healthy we'll be, including:

• Heredity: Inheriting genes can predispose us to certain diseases, cancers, or even obesity. Leading a healthy lifestyle though can significantly lessen any risks you have, but you do need to stay informed about patterns in your family's physical condition. If people in your family are prone to higher cholesterol, you're going to want to take action to keep yours low. 
• Gender: Even in these modern, progressive times, men and women aren't equal when it comes to life expectancy and health. Men generally have higher rates of fatal illness, more toxic occupational exposure, and higher rates of injuries (both accidental and self-inflicted). They tend to willingly engage in riskier behaviors as well.
• Physical Environment: The cleanliness of your surroundings will affect how clean your body can be. It's a simple cause-effect scenario. Easy access to nature has also proven to be extremely beneficial to lowering stress and boosting happiness. Mother Nature's cool like that.
• Social Environment: People with more established social networks (which can include family, friends, acquaintances, hair dressers, etc.) tend to be happier and live longer. It's a proven fact. Need an excuse to text your BFF 300 times a day? There it is. 
• Culture: The society you live in impacts your day-to-day habits and stresses. The religious or ethnic culture you grow up in can increase your likelihood of suffering from certain conditions and affect patient communication, medication use, and family support.
• Media: From commercials to blogs, everyone has a suggestion for how you can lose weight fast or boost your brain power (if we read another article about fish oil...). Whom you listen to could change your life—for better or worse. Advertising plays a significant role as well, as companies will try to get you hooked on any number of unhealthy products, from Camel cigarettes to Hostess snack cakes.
• Technology: Technology has led to better medical care, but computers and televisions also tend to keep us sitting on our butts all day. So we've got sweet MRI scanners, but also Call of Duty....
• Healthcare: There are doctors offices and specialized clinics on every other street corner, which means people in developed countries (that's you) can generally speaking get the help they need when they need it.
• Behavior: If your habits include doing yoga, cooking healthy foods, and taking long casual walks on the beach, you'll be a huge hit on Match.com. You'll also live a long, healthy life. You smokers who satisfy your need for an adrenaline rush by hang gliding without helmets, on the other hand....

One more factor affecting health deserves special mention: personality. Just like with health and physical fitness, each personality trait we have is on a continuum, so we can be high, low, or average in five categories. (Trust Shmoop: You can be both highly intelligent and average-to-low empathetic. Ah, the life of a computer.)

Most people fall near the middle for each of the five major traits. What are these big five? You can remember them with the acronym OCEAN:

• Openness to experiences: imagination, insight, broad range of interests
• Conscientiousness: thoughtfulness, impulse control, goal-directed behavior, being organized, attention to detail
• Extraversion: excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness, emotional expressiveness
• Agreeableness: trust, altruism, kindness, affection, other outgoing social behaviors
• Neuroticism: emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, sadness

Personality is so important because it determines who you are and how you'll act in any given situation. More specifically, personality affects how emotionally stable you are, how you manage stress, and how you handle relationships, all of which are essential to your general wellbeing...and if you'll ever have any friends besides your pet iguana.

(No offense, iguana.)

At the risk of sounding like a bad self-help book, understanding yourself is important. (Cue cheesy music.) But so is understanding where you come from, and we don't mean knowing which exact stork delivered you to your parents. We're talking about the formation of your personality, which is affected by your genetics, environment, family, friends, and culture.

Let's get deep here. Personality isn't as clear cut as the Pythagorean Theorem. There's a cutthroat debate raging among doctors and psychologists whether particular behaviors and characteristics are inherited (nature) or acquired (nurture). They call it...drumroll, please...the nature vs. nurture debate.

The short answer is that everything about you is likely the result of a combination of both.

What your parents provided for you in your genetic makeup will affect your temperament, or your natural, default mood. Your temperament will determine how you respond to the experiences you have, which will in turn affect your personality. It's a never-ending cycle we're all stuck in.

Genes → temperament → response to experiences → personality

In addition, every family and every culture differs in their norms of behavior and their display rules, meaning to what extent people are socially "allowed" to exhibit emotions, opinions, and reactions. For example, it's normal for people in America to laugh loudly in response to a funny joke. The same is not true in other countries like Japan, so individuals from that culture tend to be seen as more reserved.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.02a: Personality Matters

You've been reading our thoughts on personality for a while now, so we'd like to hear a little bit about you. We're going to describe the way that personality develops over time. We want you to reflect on your own life and respond to each stage of personality development with one or two sentences about how your own personality was formed. Check out Shmoop's example for the first two:

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.02b: Finding Your Space

Finding your space on the health continuum is an important step towards reaching your full potential. Consider the last activity as a "warm up" for this one (we'll make lots of cheesy health jokes during this unit, don't worry). Each response should identify where you are on the continuum between #1 (very unhealthy) and #10 (a shining superstar), and then explain why in a short paragraph, meaning around 3-4 sentences each.

While your teacher will be reading your answers (...this is school), this is a confidential space. What happens on the internet lesson, stays in the internet lesson. So feel free to get real with short anecdotes or facts about your life. Check out Shmoop's example for the first prompt.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.02c: Pacing Practice

You know how this course is all about health opportunities through physical education ? Well, it's time to get physical. That's right. Each day of this course requires you to exercise. With your body. It will include sweating. It will be glorious.

But don't worry, Shmoopers. We'll ease you into this whole fitness thing slowly. Our goal is to teach you how to exercise and give you some physical fitness tools and techniques so that by the end of this semester, you'll be able to plan and implement your very own fitness plan.

For this first semester, Shmoop will guide you through a number of different kinds of workouts and exercises. There's a catch though! You'll need to document your progress through the semester's workouts.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Write a weekly report discussing and reflecting on the workouts for that week (5 days). You can do this in Word, PowerPoint, an online journal or presentation tool of some kind (like Glogster.com)—your call. Just make sure you can share it with your teacher. In your report, you should include:
   • Discussion of what was difficult and what wasn't.
   • How you worked on your cardio, strength, and flexibility.
   • At least one picture or video documenting one of your workouts.
   • How your fitness is improving. Are you moving toward your goals? How so?
   We'll remind you at the end of each week to upload your report.
          
2. At the end of the semester, you'll create a presentation out of your weekly report showing how you've met your goals.

Ready? Let's get started.

Our goal today is to practice pacing ourselves through a workout. If we start out exercising too quickly, we'll wear out in a flash and not be able to finish our intended workout. Pacing involves monitoring how much effort we're exerting so that we can make sure we've got enough energy for the entire exercise.

First up, download this Rate of Perceived Exertion chart. The chart will help you get a good idea of the amount of effort you're putting into the workout.

Today we'll do a light to moderate cardiovascular workout to get you started on the path to health and wellness. You'll want to aim for a 4 to 5 rating, meaning you can still speak a little bit while you're working. Since cardiovascular fitness should be one of the main components of any workout, you can file this workout away in the "cardio" folder in your brain.

Go grab a clock, watch, or timer—anything that will allow you to time yourself.

Then, here's what you'll do:

• Walk 2 minutes, jog 1 minute. No sprinting...remember, this should be a steady pace. Don't use up all your energy on the first interval!
• Walk 2 minutes, jog 1 minute.
• Walk 2 minutes, jog 1 minute.
• Walk 1 minute, jog 1 minute.
• Walk 1 minute, jog 2 minutes. Remember that steady pace.
• Walk 1 minute, jog 2 minutes.
• Walk 1 minute, jog 2 minutes.

Each walk-jog combo is an interval. The interval times switch up halfway through the workout, so make sure you're paying attention.

The total time for the activity is 20 minutes, but if you've got more energy left in you when the 20 minutes is up, go ahead and try a few more intervals!

In case the word "jog" is foreign to you, jogging means running a steady, easy to moderate pace. It should be comfortable enough that you can maintain the pace for a few minutes.

If you're new to running it may be uncomfortable the first few times, but you shouldn't be going so fast you have to stop after 10 seconds.

Ready, Set, Go!

Remember that if this is the exercise you want to provide visual evidence for (photo, video) in your weekly report, you should set that up.