Unit 2 Reflection

Health is the physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being of a person, including five pillars of health: sleep, stress, exercise, nutrition, and social. Personally, I do not consider myself healthy; I eat very healthy occasionally when I feel like I have been too unhealthy, but I typically eat lots of carbohydrates and empty calories. Furthermore, I exercise very little, not even reaching the bare minimum recommended amount for every day: 60 minutes of exercise. On the other hand, there are some very healthy people at SHS who watch their nutrition like nutritionists and exercise a lot more than the minimum required amount. I believe that the health and anatomy classes in SHS do an excellent job of emphasizing the importance of health and exercise, especially emphasizing the pillars of stress and sleep. SHS is a very academically rigorous school, and as a result, many students are sleep deprived and are loaded with stress, leading to emotional instability and physiological issues. In order to promote greater health on campus, there should be more healthy options in the cafeteria that are more affordable; many students buy the very unhealthy choices that the cafeteria has because they have run out of money. However, I believe that our school has done an excellent job of promoting health and offering resources to support health.

From this unit, I learned about health and the five pillars of health: sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress, and social. We learned about the general definition of health and how to maintain a good balance in life, but we also learned about details on the physiological and mental effects of each of the five pillars of health on one's body. For nutrition, we learned about the four macromolecules and how to maintain a balanced diet; for this process, I used the SuperTracker to really see how someone's balanced diet changes from person to person. For the pillar of exercise, I learned about the different types of exercise and how they benefit different parts of the human body. For the pillar of stress, I learned about the three stages of stress, and how continuous stress on one's body will lead to the general adaption syndrome and chronic exhaustion. For sleep, I learned about non-REM and REM sleep and the dangers of little sleep. Lastly, for the pillar of social, I learned about the importance of social connection and the benefits of having support from peers.

Despite all of the things that I learned, I still do not understand why getting enough protein in one's diet is more important than getting enough vegetables. Ever since I was young, I was taught to eat less protein and more vegetables, since protein would apparently lead to high cholesterol. During class, there was not a detailed explanation behind this concept, so I am still confused about this concept. In the next unit, I will try to improve by raising more questions during class and on the sides of the notes and also participating more during class; I am usually too sleepy in the morning to actively participate and listen closely to the lectures. Due to my early morning sleepiness, I eat a hearty breakfast to wake me up and thus allow me to learn more efficiently.

A real-world application of these concepts is found in a CNN Article titled "How Strong is the science behind the U.S. Dietary Guidelines" (http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/24/health/dietary-guidelines-science/index.html) , which is about the faults of the current US Dietary Guidelines. This article reminds me about a reading from this unit about nutrition and the society's over-complication of dietary guidelines. In reality, eating healthy is not that difficult to do, but now the nutrition labels and details of food over-complicate things and make us have misunderstandings about what is healthy and what is not.

My health goals are...to eat healthier more consistently and reduce my carb intake. I also wish to sleep earlier and manage my time better in order to do so.

A healthy life is important to me because...I want to live a long and happy life with good emotional and physical health; I think my life will be much more enjoyable when I feel healthy and good about my state of being.

Actions I will take...I plan to drink less pearl milk tea because I drink it every day and it is full of empty calories, Furthermore, I plan to sleep earlier and get at least 7-9 hours of sleep every night in order to wake up more refreshed and not feel as drowsy during the school day.

I will know I have reached my goals when...I stop being extremely drowsy during the day and my school performance becomes better. I will also know when I am not in a bad mood as often as I am now, since more sleep and a healthier diet contributes to one's mood and overall well-being.