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Running Start/HEA150 - Health/Week 1/Discussion Replies Week 1.md

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+#rs/class/hea150 #rs/discussion 
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+##### Replying to Javier
+Hi Javier,
+I agree with your point about mental health not being covered enough by the media and talked about as an issue that we need to solve. As someone currently in high school, there is definitely more talk about these topics in and outside of class, but I think there is still room to grow. It is also likely that being in a progressive city such as Seattle results in more discussion on these issues, and there are many other places in the country that have much more distance to cover. I also agree that there is a lot of unnecessary coverage on the diets of celebrities and not enough on the real causes of the rising obesity rate. It also seems to me like there are companies or people advertising different solutions to weight loss that have not been thoroughly tested in an attempt to make money off of this issue.
+
+#### Replying to Derrick
+Hi Derrick,
+I agree with you that there needs to be less of a stigma around discussing mental health issues, especially in professional environments. Especially with how large a part of our lives social media is now, more research needs to go into how if affects our lives. I also agree with your point that routine diseases don't get enough coverage in the news, and I think this is a larger problem that extends to much more than just disease outbreaks. There are often things in the world that are very dangerous and large issues such as wars and natural disasters that get overlooked in the media either because they have been in the news cycle for too long or aren't unique enough to warrant a story. I think that diseases are a great example of this, and some of the most deadly are covered very little because they are so routine, even if they also affect the largest number of people.
+
+#### Replying to Kristionna
+Hi Kristionna,
+I agree with your point that social isolation is an issue that needs to be talked about more, and I think it is especially important after the COVID pandemic. There are many kids and teenagers right now that went through COVID during formative years in their lives. This is the time where many people learn how to be social and manage friendships and social interactions, and due to the quarantine many kids lost out on these opportunities. I don't think we've fully seen the results that this will have yet, and I think it is something we definitely need to focus on more. I also agree that media coverage on weight loss is often on medications or shots that advertise themselves as the best way to lose weight, while methods that are more beneficial long term like eating healthier foods and exercising more are often not emphasized or covered.
+
+#### Replying to Hassen
+Hi Hassen,
+I think that your point is interesting about the media not focusing on issues like heart disease that have a higher mortality rate and instead focusing on other issues such as mental health. While I do agree that there should be more coverage on issues such as heart disease and their causes, one of the causes of heart disease is stress which is related to mental health. Especially with things like social media increasing the amount of stress in many people's lives, I think that mental health is an important issue to discuss since stress can lead to an increased risk of many conditions that do have a high mortality rate.

Running Start/HEA150 - Health/Week 1/Discussion Responses Week 1.md

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+#rs/class/hea150 #rs/discussion 
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+1. A health issue that I believe is not publicized enough is the recent findings of many types of cancers increasing in prevalence for people under the age of 50. A recent study found that the incidence of 14 types of cancer increased for people under the age of 50. While difference in screening guidelines and detection can lead to some of these effects, they don't account for everything and factors such as a rise in obesity and change in diets is also likely a cause. I believe that this issue should be covered more because cancer very deadly and we need to raise awareness and work towards cures as much as we can. This issue largely affects physical wellness, since cancer causes damage to your body, but it can also cause damages to the other dimensions as an effect of a deterioration of physical wellness, or the knowledge that a cure doesn't always work.
+2. A health issue that I think is receiving too much attention in the media right now is the current administration's claims about the causes of autism. The secretary of Health and Human Services recently claimed that mothers taking acetaminophen while pregnant leads to an increased risk of their children developing autism once they are born. This has become a large news story, partially because there little to no studies supporting it and many that refute this claim. Even if some of the media coverage is pointing the lack of evidence that was presented to back up this claim, there is still media coverage that is not doing this. Because there was no real evidence presented to support this claim I don't believe that it should be a news story so that people aren't misled into believing that studies have shown that there is a link between painkillers during pregnancy and autism. (https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/trump-autism-tylenol-medical-experts/)
+3. I was assigned to look at Guatemala. Currently, the life expectancy of Guatemala is 71.9 for females and 65.6 for males. The average life expectancy in Guatemala is about 3 years less than the rest of the world, and 8 years less than that of America. The top causes of death in Guatemala are COVID-19, Ischaemic heart disease and Diabetes mellitus. The population in Guatemala is also growing very rapidly, and currently only 5.9% of the population is over the age of 65. Something that I found interesting was that while the life expectancy around the world fell after the COVID-19 pandemic, Guatemala's fell more sharply than the world average. Especially with COVID being the largest cause of death by a large margin, I wonder if Guatemala experienced the pandemic worse than many other countries in the world. COVID-19 being the largest cause of death didn't surprise me since it was such a deadly disease and killed so many people, but I was surprised how much the population skews to the younger side. I was also surprised that diabetes was one of the largest causes of death in Guatemala, since it doesn't seem to be one here in America.

Running Start/HEA150 - Health/Week 1/Search and Report Week 1.md

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+#rs/assignment #rs/class/hea150 
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+1. I chose the year 1925.
+2. The most common cause of death in 2023 and 1925 is heart disease, and cancer is in the top five most common causes for both years as well.
+3. While COVID-19 is the tenth most common cause of death in the United States in 2023, the common flu was the second most common cause of death in 1925. Strokes are also the fourth most common cause of death in 2023, while they are not in the top ten in 1925.
+4. The most common cause of death in the United States currently is heart disease, which is a noncommunicable disease meaning that it is a result of behavioral, environmental and genetic factors. One of the reasons why heart disease is a large cause of death in the United States is the rising obesity rate and amount of processed, unhealthy food that Americans are eating. The obesity rate has been rising for decades in the United States, and obesity can lead to increased blood pressure which is a risk factor for heart disease. The diet of Americans has gotten progressively more processed and has included more salts, sugars and fats which leads to an increased risk for obesity. These are likely reasons for why heart disease as well as diabetes are such common causes of death currently.
+5. Recently I have seen stories about a lot of the most common causes of death in the United States. Cancer has been in the news recently in relation to budget cuts and the reduced ability for our country to research possible cures, and I think it is still in media because it is represented as a goal that our country and the world is working towards solving. Accidents also often make the news because they are shocking and make for good news stories. There has also been talk about heart disease and obesity in the United States with one of the current HHS's focuses being on reducing the processed food in our diets.