The Psychology of Health

I'm taking a course this semester called Health Psychology. I thought it would be about the psychological impact of being diagnosed with a severe illness. We might get to that topic at some point, but for now, this class is not at all as I expected. (I checked the syllabus and looks like we'll spend just the last day of class on cancer. Just one day.) So far we've disgusted the health benefits of making good health choices. This doesn't sound too bad, but I don't think I've ever gotten more frustrated taking a class than taking this one.

The textbook for my Health Psychology class.

First day of Health Psychology, my professor asks us to fill out a one-question survey. She asked each of use to rank how much we value our health, on a scale from 0 - 7. I decided to be honest and I wrote 3.

I've never been that healthy. My mom made us eat healthy foods growing up. She made us eat a serving of broccoli and a glass of milk every single night until I was in college. I absolutely hated it. She would beg me to work out with her (she exercised every night), but I'd always refuse. "Exercising is boring," I'd say. She wanted to me to exercise so bad, that she actually gave me roommate at DePaul University $20 for taking me to the gym one time! My mom really cared about her health. She never smoked and very rarely drank (and when she did, it was usually a margarita!). She ate a health diet and took daily vitamins.

Even before my mom got sick, I obviously didn't value my health very much. Probably because I was young and ignorant. And like my mom always told me, "you think you're healthy because you're not overweight, but that's not what being healthy means."

But when my mom got sick, I was in total shock. My mom always talked about how my dad didn't take care of his health and that it'll catch up with him one day. And that she didn't want me to grow up like him. But to watch her to struggle and then lose her life to cancer, why should I value good health? Good health can't prevent cancer. It can't prevent death. My mom was one of the healthiest people I knew, and she died of cancer.

My professor read though all the responses out loud, and most people wrote 6. There were some 7s and 5s. But when she got to mine, she said "Huh. Well 3 is kind of low." Yes, I know I should value good health more. My mom would want me to. But after everything I seen in the passed 2 years, it's hard to believe that having good health habits will really help me in the long run.

My professor told us that 75% of all deaths caused by cancer are attributed to lifestyle choices and health behaviors of the individual. [35% attributed to poor diet, 30% attributed to tobacco use, 7% attributed to sexual behavior, and 3% attributed to over-consumption of alcohol]

I realize that 75% is quite a high percentage and I understand why our professor is trying to convince everyone to be healthy, but I can't help but get so unbelievably frustrated during this class.

She told us about a study from 1965 to 1990 that found that healthy women who did 7 good health behaviors [didn't smoke, rarely drank alcohol, ate a balanced diet, exercised, got 7-9 hours of sleep every night, ate breakfast everyday, and didn't eat between meals] had a 43% lower mortality rate that women who didn't do any of these good health behaviors.

My mom did all of those things. She was healthy. Then why is she dead? It's not like she was killed in an accident. She died of a health problem. She died of cancer.

I don't know the exact reason for this, but as my mom's got sicker and sicker she stopped caring about her daily vitamins or a good diet. There were times when she ate two ice cream cones a day. She didn't seem to care. I'm not sure if the brain tumor had affected her reasoning so much that she just wanted to eat whatever she wanted. Or if she decided that she was going to die anyways, so what was the point in taking multivitamins? Or maybe she was so incredibly frustrated that decades of healthy diets and exercise and doing everything right didn't count for shit. That's what frustrates me the most at least. And that's why I wrote 3 on that survey.




Update:
Right after I wrote this blog post, I decided to go to the gym. I probably haven't gone to the gym8 months or so. Maybe I actually am learning from this class. Or maybe I exercised because I know my mom always wanted me to.