Decisions

 **Your decisions are a big part of you wellness. Choosing to smoke, do drugs, and consume too much alcohol hurts your wellness. It is your choice to wear a seatbelt when you drive or a helmet when you bike, but you don't have control over whether you are in a crash or not. Also obesity is your own decision. You made those choices to eat unhealthy and not exercise and that is the the price you have to pay. Your Decisions are a big part of your well-being.** __**Smoking, Alcohol, and Drugs Oh My **__ By omitting Smoking, Alcohol and Drugs from your life, you you are able to enjoy a happy healthy lifestyle and not go through the painful consequences these substances come along with. In the next three paragraphs, you will learn all about the negatives in the usage of these substances. Smoking Imagine your life, all of your hopes and dreams. Now take away 15 years. That’s what smoking will do to you. Smoking is a harmful to a person’s whole body, but it is most damaging to the heart. Your heart's job is to keep blood pumping all around the body, supplying different parts with nutrients and oxygen. When you smoke, you are destroying your heart and slowly, your body stops functioning. In a cigarette, nicotine is what you are addicted to. Nicotine causes blood clots to form and restricts blood flow. When you smoke, your risks for many health problems increase. For example, a smoker is 5 more times more likely to have a heart attack than a person who doesn’t smoke. Also you are more likely to get common colds and flus because smoking damages your immune system. Have you ever seen a person who smokes have a hard time breathing? That’s because smoking ruins your respiratory system. Your lungs become irritated from all of the smoke and 400 chemicals you are inhaling and this causes your respiratory system to become wrecked. Speaking of the 400 chemicals in cigarettes, many of them are ingredients that are poisonous. Would you ever pop a mothball into your mouth? Or drink the cleaner under your kitchen sink? Cigarettes consist of those ingredients so why would you inhale them? If you had the choice to avoid cancer, wouldn’t you take it? Say goodbye to that opportunity if you are a smoker. Stomach, bladder, kidney, pancreas, leukemia, throat and lung cancer are all just the common cancers due to smoking. You can still have those precious 15 years of you life. Just don’t smoke. The decision is all yours.

media type="youtube" key="JndtG8Y7yfw" height="315" width="420" align="right" Alcohol

Alcohol is like a poison to our bodies. It is an addictive drink that with too much consumption raises blood pressure, and increases your risks of strokes, heart diseases, cancers, accidents and violence. Alcohol damages your brain and heart and causes malnutrition because it contains many empty calories. DWI stands for driving while intoxicated. When you are intoxicated, your mental and motor skills are affected, making it dangerous for you to drive. In 2006, the NHTSA estimates 40% of motor vehicle crashes were due to alcohol related causes. In 1996, 1,467,300 people were arrested in the United States for driving while intoxicated. Alcohol poisoning is also a side effect to the consumption of too much alcohol. It affects your breathing, heart rate, gag reflexes and can result in comas or death. Binge drinking is drinking 5 or more drinks in a short period of time. Alcohol poisoning can occur due to binge drinking. Alcoholism is an addiction to large sums of alcohol. When a person turns to alcohol to conceal problems or get ride of stress it is also considered alcoholism. These people lead a stressful life, become violent, have low self-esteem, and become very depressed if they are not already. Alcohol is a dangerous substance to use. It is poisoning your body. Drugs The definition of a drug is a chemical substance that affects the processes of the mind or body. They can be put into the groups of Medicines, Legal addictive drugs, and Illegal addictive drugs. Illegal drugs are your choice to take, but taking them is dangerous not only for your reputation, but your body too. People experiment with drugs for a lot of different reasons. Some use drugs to “fit in,” to forget about there problems for a while, or even because they are bored. Many vital organisms are damaged when you use drugs including your heart and brain. When using drugs, your inhibitions are lowered and you do things you would never do normally. Some side effects of drugs are: loss or gain of weight, interest level in school decreases, personality becomes more introverted, becoming more involved in fights, puffy eyes, regular colds, lack of concentration, and moodiness. Withdrawal from a drug is a very tough process. You body is either physically or mentally addicted to a drug and you can't stop easily. Withdrawal causes vomiting, terror episodes, sweating, shaking and more. This is because your body is adjusting to being drug free. When you use drugs, so much in your life becomes lost.



Importance of Buckling Up Whenever I'm in the car with someone, I always recommend they buckle their seatbelt. When I was younger, I used to get very upset when an adult wasn't wearing a seatbelt even if it was just to back the car out. I did that because I was taught to be very careful in a car. I wish everyone followed the same simple rule of buckling up because it would save many lives. Every year, 40,000 Americans are killed in motor vehicle crashes. If people just buckled up, 40,000 more Americans could be alive today and 40,000 more families wouldn’t be grieving. When a car crash occurs and the person in the accident is not wearing a seatbelt, the cost for repairing the damage is much higher. According to the NHTSA, people who survive a car crash without a seatbelt have to stay 3 to 5 times longer in the hospital and pay up to 7 times more for medical bills. In the state of Minnesota, it is illegal not to wear a seatbelt. The fee for being ticketed for not wearing a seatbelt is $25 but ends up costing a person around $100 with fees. Shoulder and lap belts are the best seatbelt designs so far. They protect your internal organs, minimize forward movement, and provide less chances of excessive back and neck jerking. In just the time between 1966 and 1975, about 90,425 lives were saved. It takes seconds to buckle up, why wouldn’t you when it could be the difference between life and death?
 * __Safety __**



Benefits of Wearing a Helmet Head injuries are one of the most common causes of permanent disabilities and fatalities. Over 2/3 of hospital admissions due to bike accidents are brain injury related. In 2008, 713 bike accident deaths occurred in the US. Helmets are proven to be the most useful safety equipment and can prevent a lot of harm. The main areas they protect are your face, head and brain. In 22 of the U.S.A. sates, laws have been pasted decreeing that people under the age of 18 are required to wear a helmet. When buying a bike helmet, look for a CPSC sticker. This insures that the helmet is high quality and will provide protection to your head. Wearing a helmet on a motorcycle is just as and even more important. Being in a motorcycle crash is very harmful to your brain and body because unlike on a bike, a motor is pushing you forwards. The speed at which the motorcycle is going is a lot faster and the impact harder on your body. People in motorcycle crashes without helmets end up paying huge medical bill just like drivers not wearing seatbelts because their bodies get so damaged from the experience. When you think about the objective of football, running as fast as you can to knock another player down, it is pretty clear that many concussions occur at all levels. If a person has too many concussions, long-term brain injuries may occur. Although a football helmet doesn’t prevent all harm that can happen to the head, it prevents a ton. Next time you go out on a bike ride, use your head. Put on a helmet and be safe. __**Obesity **__ <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 130%;">Obesity is defined as having an excessive amount of body fat. Your BMI is what determines if you are obese or not. The formula for your BMI is (Weight in Pounds / (Height in inches x Height in inches)) x 703. It is not an exact way to tell but as of right now, it is our only source for defining obesity. Obesity causes many health risks including heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Compared to other countries, America has a much higher obesity rate...or had at least. Since America is considered the "role model country," other countries are quickly following in our fatty, food processed ways. With the exceptions a few tiny islands scattered around the world, America has the highest obesity rate in the world. The 2 main causes of obesity are lack of exercise and eating more food than your body can process. Time. That is a main problem that leads to obesity. Cooking a nutritious meal takes time and people don’t want to spend their free or family time exercising. Also, our jobs used to involve labor. Jobs now have evolved to sitting at a desk with a computer all day long. It is very hard to break the habits we make for ourselves and if as children we eat junk food, our ways will carry on to adulthood. Sadly now, 63% of adults in America are obese or over weight. There are three, categories of obesity: Obese, morbidly obese and super obese. The word morbid means of the death and diseases nature so being morbidly obese means you will die because of your weight. There was no such thing as being super obese until doctors in America had to come up with a new category because people were getting too big to fit in the morbidly obese section. Americans are headed in the wrong direction and could start to eat themselves to death. People are starting to wake up though, and realize we need to change. We have the power to turn America into a healthier place.

<span style="color: #7308da; display: block; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 190%; text-align: center;">My Opinion on Obesity <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 130%;"> I don't believe if a person is obese they are necessarily lazy. I know that is the case sometimes, but not all the time. I believe the main reason for obesity is temptations. American foods have become not only super processed, but very salty, fatty, and sweet. These three things are the ingredients our bodies crave the most. It takes willpower to say to yourself, no, I’m not going to eat a burger and fries and some people just don’t have that. Another reason people become obese is because they are uneducated about nutrition. I believe that by spreading the information and benefits of healthy eating, our obesity rate can decrease a little bit. If America has had to add another category even worse than super obese, it shows we are doing nothing to change our ways and we are getting worse. I want to change the way America is looked at when the topic of obesity comes up. I know we can change; it will just take effort. <span style="background-color: #ff00ee; color: #ff00f4; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Home Page <span style="background-color: #ff00ee; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Nutrition <span style="background-color: #ff00ee; color: #ff00f4; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Physical Activity  <span style="background-color: #ff00ee; color: #ff00f4; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Decisions <span style="background-color: #ff00ee; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">References