Academic Institutions Should Encourage Disease Prevention

One thing that I have come to realize about being a student and from observing fellow students is that no one will do something unless it is required. Institutions can actively participate in disease prevention by allowing the gyms to stay open for people to workout and by not charging people to use workout equipment as long as they are students at the institutions. In addition, they should require that you need a certain number of hours of health and fitness classes. This will help many people adapt physically active lifestyles or just stay fit. Many academic institutions do not provide out-of-class or in-class instructions on how to maintain a healthy heart. If institutions began to provide these types of instruction, it could positively influence the lives of many of their female students.

Diet and Exercise

Dieting and exercise have been a big problem for me since I started college two and a half years ago. My first year in college, I went through a phase that I just wanted to be skinny. I would purposely eat only animal crackers and go days or a full week without eating an actual meal. I am not anorexic, but people have always told me that if you really want to lose weight then you should starve yourself. The diet worked with me not eating and I ended up losing fifteen pounds. That summer I committed to exercising and I noticed that with a decent diet and about an hour of exercise, anyone can easily shed some pounds. Diet and exercise is a hard thing for me. I am constantly busy with school and work so I tend to just grab some fast food and go. Lately, me and my boyfriend have started cooking late at night so that we have food for the next day. This helps so that we don’t consume a lot of fast food. Exercising on the other hand is something that I have not done in awhile. I plan to start exercising so that I can slim down for my trip to Miami over the summer. Over the next five years, I want to just maintain my weight at about where it is now. I do not want to gain weight. I am going to watch my food intake and participate in more activities and daily exercise so that I can maintain my weight.

Aging

I believe people try their best to stay young because they don’t want to be old. Many young people, including myself, view old people as being unable to participate in activities that they did when they were young. I tend to see older people and it seems like I only observe the negative effects of aging, like using canes to walk, not being able to see, broken backs and hips, and disease. The concern that aging most likely brings for most people is that aging means death is getting closer. The likelihood of dying at a young age is low as compared to dying when you have past the age of forty because that is when cardiovascular disease begin and other health complications come into play. My mom owns a home care agency and I have volunteered to help the patients from time to time. Through this experience, I have seen that being old is hard. Many old people are usually sick because they did not take good care of themselves when they were young and have to deal with these complications in old age. I feel that people try to stay young to run away from the complications of being old and unattractive. Old people are ignored and it is very difficult to realize that you are getting old when you look at the way the elderly are treated in today’s society. I personally do not want to get old, but I know I won’t be young forever.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

I agree and disagree with the fact that sexually transmitted diseases are equated to immorality, promiscuous behavior, or low social status. I disagree because I have known people who contracted sexually transmitted diseases from a partner that they trusted like a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend or their husband or wife. The thing about sexually transmitted diseases that people fail to understand is that it can happen to anyone at anytime. No one is immune from sexually transmitted disease because if you have unprotected sex then you have exposed yourself to a possibility of contracting a STD. However, I also agree that these three things increase the likelihood of getting an STD. Immorality because the trust is not in the relationship; promiscuous behavior because you are exposing yourself without protection; low social status because you lack the resources to protect yourselves. Sexually transmitted diseases must be a devastating thing to experience. I knew someone that died from AIDS because his dead wife gave him the disease before she died. It is so unfair to see a life cut short because someone put their trust in someone that betrayed them. STDs have gotten to the point that married people need to sleep with condoms to protect themselves and that is very scary.