PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND HEALTH

HEALTH BEHAVIOR AND HEALTH RISK FACTORS

In the past, diseases or sickness caused by bacteria were a constant threat to people. However, with
medical advances, most sickness and diseases that affect a person’s health couple of years ago can now
be prevented. Today, most health problems are related to lifestyle or the way we live. Lifestyle diseases
are partly attributed to unhealthy behaviors. Some of these unhealthy behaviors are watching television
or surfing the internet for few hours, smoking, eating at fast food restaurants more often and substance
abuse.

HEALTH BEHAVIOR – is any activity undertaken for the purpose of averting or detecting disease or for
improving health and well-being. It is the behaviour pattern, actions and practices that speak about
health preservation, health restoration and health improvement.

RISK FACTORS – are behaviors or situations that increase the possibility of developing a disease.

 Uncontrollable risk factors. Are factors that you cannot change such as heredity, age and
others.
 Controllable risk factors. Are risk factors that you can do something about. They can be
controlled by your behavior. Your health behavior will determine the level of physical health
that you will have in the years to come.

Health risk behaviors that will likely cause health problems to young people like you:

SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE – is defined as a type of lifestyle where an individual does not receive regular
amounts of physical activity. This results to a number of overweight teenagers and heart attack even at
an early age. This is characterized by “inactivity”.

ALCOHOL AND DRUG USE – teenagers, in their search for personal identity, are often influenced into
taking drugs or resorting to alcohol use. This affects one’s health since alcohol is the major cause of liver
disease and drug use as the culprit for a number of car accident cases, depression, mental disorder and
others.

ADDICTION TO CIGARETTE/TOBACCO – smoking leads to diseases like respiratory problems, cancer,

UNHEALTHY AND POOR EATING HABITS – Your eating habits can either help or prevent you from
developing many diseases. e.g diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, stroke

STRESS – is more often causes physical symptoms including headaches, upset stomach, elevated blood
pressure, chest pain and sleeping problems. Research suggest that stress also can bring on or worsen
certain symptoms or diseases. e.g heart disease, headache, upset stomach, temporary blindness, chest
pain, sleeping problem, sexual uninterested.

EATING HABITS AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

What individual eats before, during and after exercise is essential for comfort and performance
throughout the exercise. While eating soon before exercise does not give the immensity of the fuel
required for he activity, it can avoid the disturbing indications of hunger for the duration of exercise. The
main source of energy for active muscles is carbohydrates which accumulates in the muscles as
glycogen in the days prior to exercise. This is why post-exercise meal is important to revitalization and
being prepared for the subsequent set of exercise.

Food provides the energy and components our bodies need for develop and movement. For our bodies
to be able to use the energy stored in food. We must first extract it through digestion and store it so we
can repeatedly draw on it to generate the energy molecule that drives all actions of the body.

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FUELLING FOR PERFORMANCE

Our body is like a vehicle, its engine which represents our heart is running when working out. Meaning
when fuelling up the tank with the right foods and radiator with the right fluids using the right amount
at the right foods and the radiator with the right fluids using the right amount at the right time is very
important.

Here is the proper timing of eating before, during and after workout:

Before: Fuel up preferably, fuel up two hours before you exercise by:

 Hydrating with water

During: Make a pit stop, your body needs to hydrate with small, frequent sips of water during workout.

After: Refuel you tank

 Fluids – Drink water. You may blend your water with 100% juice such as orange juice.
 Carbohydrates – You burn many carbohydrates when you exercise. In 20-60 minutes after your
workout, your muscles can store carbohydrates and protein as energy and help in recovery.
 Protein – Eat food with protein to help repair and grow muscles.

EATING HABITS

Eating is such an enjoyable experience that we often choose to eat foods that taste very good, but that
don’t make us feel very good afterward. Moreover it’s not only the choices of food that should be given
attention. Many young people are slowly adopting eating habit that are detrimental to their health.

Emotional Eating – is the tendency of its sufferers to react to stress by eating, even when not hungry,
frequently high-calorie or high-carbohydrate foods that have least nutritional value. Emotional eaters
often crave for comfort foods such as ice cream, cookies, chocolates, chips, fries, pizza, and other junk
food. According to a study about 40% of people tend to eat more when stressed while about 40% eat
less and 20% experience no change for food they eat when exposed to stress.

Clueless Eating – this refers to the behavior of people who know nothing about nutrition. People falling
into this category may be significantly overweight and perhaps experiencing a variety of degenerative
diseases.

Trance Eating – speaks about a form of negative multitasking such as reading, watching TV, emailing etc.
while eating making a person entirely insensible to what they are doing.

Sleep-Deprived Eating – For reasons not fully understood, lack of sleep wreaks havoc on the hormones
connection to appetite. It is one of the lesser-known facts.

Medication Eating – food is most often the drug of choice of all the substances that we swallow and
consume to make ourselves feel better. When we are apprehensive, depressed, distressed, annoyed,
bothered, irritated, ashamed or guilty we eat. Dealing with hard emotional conditions is never an easy
task. However, it is not an excuse for constant abuse of food.

Diet Eating – the only difference of diet eating over the other kinds of eating is the belief that something
good will come out of it. However to achieve such goal, one must choose a specific diet that he intends
to have as a permanent lifestyle change.

Social Eating – people use eating as a way of meeting people and socializing like going out to dinner with
friends, snacking while watching a movie and eating junk food. However social eating can have stern
effects in the manner we see food and nutrition, leading to overeating, obesity, malnutrition, and other
health problems.