Exam 3 Flashcards
Health Behavior / Behavioral Immunogen
A health-enhancing behavior or habit. Actions that people take to improve or maintain their health, such as, exercising regularly, using sunscreen, etc. These behaviors interact and are often interrelated. Ex. exercising and choosing to avoid a high-fat diet.
Health Belief Model (HBM)
A non-stage theory that identifies four beliefs that influence decision making regarding health behavior: perceived susceptibility to a health threat, perceived severity of the health threat, perceived benefits or and barriers to the behavior, and cue to action (advice/factors).
Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)
A theory that predicts health behavior on the basis of three factors: personal attitude toward the behavior, the subjective norm regarding the behavior, and perceived degree of control over the behavior.
Behavioral Intention
In theories of health behavior, the rational decision to engage in a health-related behavior or to refrain from engaging in the behavior.
Subjective Norm
An individual’s interpretation of the views of other people regarding a particular health-related behavior.
Perceived Behavioral Control
Our expectations of success in performing the health behavior.
Transtheoretical Model (TTM) / Stages of Change Model
A widely used stage theory that contends that people pass through 5 stages in altering health-related behavior: precontemplation (no serious thinking about change), contemplation (acknowledge and consider change), preparation, action, and maintenance.
Primary Prevention
Health-enhancing efforts to prevent disease or injury from occurring.
Secondary Prevention
Actions taken to identify and treat an illness or disability early in its course.
Tertiary Prevention
Actions taken to contain damage once a disease or disability has progressed beyond its early stages. Ex. chemotherapy.
Health Education
Any planned intervention involving communication that promotes the learning of healthier behavior.
Gain-Framed Message
A health message that focuses on attaining positive outcomes, or by avoiding undesirable ones, by adopting a health-promoting behavior. Effective in promoting prevention behaviors.
Loss-Framed Message
A health message that focuses on a negative outcome from failing to perform a health-promoting behavior. Effective in promoting illness-detection (screening) behavior.
6 Risk-Taking Behaviors
Smoking,eating high-fat/low-fiber foods, decreased exercise, increase use of alcohol/drugs, not using proven medical methods for preventing or diagnosing disease early, engaging in violent behavior.
Overt Family Conflict
Constant outbursts of anger.
Community Barriers
People are more likely to adopt health-enhancing behaviors when they are promoted by community organizations.
Precede/Proceed Model
Identify problems, etc., analyze background factors, implements health education that target factors.
Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions
Focus on the conditions that elicit health behaviors and the factors that help to maintain and reinforce them.
Traditional Behavior
Modification programs derive from classical and operant conditioning.
Self-Monitoring
People keeping track of their own target behavior that is to be modified, including the stimuli associated with it and the consequences that follow.
Aversion Therapy
A behavioral intervention based on classical conditioning, in which stimuli that elicit an unwanted target behavior become associated with unpleasant outcomes.
Operant Behavior
Any voluntary behavior that “operates” on the environment.
Discriminative Stimuli
Environmental signals that certain behaviors will be followed by reinforcement.
Stimulus-Control Intervention
A behavioral intervention aimed at modifying the environmental discriminative stimuli that controls a target behavior by signaling its reinforcement.
Relapse Prevention
Training in coping skills and other techniques intended to help people resist falling back into old health habits following a successful behavioral intervention.
Contingency Contract
A formal agreement between a person attempting to change a health behavior and another individual, such as a therapist, regarding the consequences of target behaviors.
Token Economy
A behavioral intervention based on operant conditioning, in which desirable target behaviors are reinforced with marbles or other tokens that can be exchanged for money and other rewards.
Modeling
Learning that occurs by observing others.
Negative Emotion Spillover
When work-related frustrations contribute to greater irritability, impatience, or other negative behaviors at home.
Social Withdrawal
When one or more working adult parents or caregivers withdraw behaviorally and emotionally from family life especially after a stressful day at work.
Safety Triad
A healthy work culture requires attention to the person (biology, cognition, etc), environment (management/work conditions), and behaviors (individual and group performance).
Positive Psychology
The study of optimal human functioning and the healthy interplay between people and their environments. A strength-based, preventive approach to research and interventions.
Thriving
A paradoxical outcome in which adversity somehow leads people to greater psychological and/or physical well-being.
Allostatic Overload
The consequences of long-term elevations of stress-related catabolic hormones, including hypertension, wasted muscles, ulcers, fatigue, and increased risk of chronic disease.
Resilience
The capacity of the brain and body to withstand challenges to homeostasis. Mediated by distinct biological adaptations that can blunt stress-induced HPA activation to promote normal functioning, even in the face of adversity.
Biological Embedding
The process by which the structure and functioning of the brain are shaped by feedback from neuroendocrine system as they are engaged as part of the body’s effort to maintain homeostasis.
Self-Enhancement
A tendency to recall positive over negative info, to see oneself more positively than do others, and to feel personally responsible for good outcomes.
Curiousity
A person’s orientation or attraction to novel stimuli.
Catabolism
Breaking down of the tissue to provide energy.
Anabolism
Cell activity that builds up the body to synthesize complex molecules using the energy from catabolism.
VO2(max)
Aerobic capacity. The measure of cardiorespiratory endurance.
Physical Activity
Bodily movements produced by skeletal muscles that requires energy expenditure.
Physical Exercise
Physical activity that is planned, repetitive, and purposeful in the sense that it is intended to improve or maintain one or more aspects of fitness.
Aerobic Exercise
Light- to moderate-intensity exercise performed for an extended period of time. Ex. swimming, cycling, and running.
Anaerobic Exercise
High-intensity exercise performed for short periods of time. Ex. weight training and sprinting.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMI)
The minimum number of calories the body needs to maintain bodily functions while at rest.
Calorie
A measure of food energy equivalent to the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius.
Physical Fitness
A set of attributes relating to the ability to perform physical activity that include muscular strength, endurance, flexibility, and healthy body composition.
Cardiorespiratory Endurance / Aerobic Fitness
The ability of the heart, blood vessels, and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles during physical activity for prolonged periods of time.
VO2 / Oxygen Consumption
“Volume of oxygen.” The amount of oxygen that your body uses.
Muscular Strength
The amount of force that a muscle or group of muscles can exert against heavy resistance.
Muscular Endurance
The ability of a muscle or a group of muscles to repeat a movement many times or to hold a particular position for an extended period of time.
Flexibility
The degree to which an individual muscle will lengthen.
Body Composition
The amount of fat in the body compared to the amount of lean mass (muscle + bones).
Osteoporosis
A disease of the bones involving a loss of bone mineral density that leads to an increased risk of fracture.
Metabolic Syndrome (MetS)
A cluster of conditions that include blood pressure, high blood sugar level, abdominal obesity, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and high triglyceride level that occur together and increase a person’s risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Closely linked to obesity, lack of physical activity, and insulin resistance.
Exercise Self-Efficacy
Confidence in his/her ability to perform certain physical skills correctly.
Forecasting Myopia
People contemplating an exercise routine place disproportionate emphasis on the beginning of a workout, which may be unpleasant.
Circadian Rhythm
An internal biological clock that operates on a 24-hr cycle of night and day.
REM Sleep
Fourth stage of sleep / paradoxical sleep. Rapid eye movement sleep ; a sleep stage during which vivid dreams occur. For 10 minutes, your eyes dart back and forth, heart rate and breathing become more irregular. REM is marked by faster beta brain waves, and is believed to be important for consolidating memory and other cognitive functions. The motor cortex is active, but the brain blocks its messages, leaving the muscles relaxed.
NREM-1
First stage of sleep where your brain generates the irregular waves. This is the briefest and lightest stage of sleep, and loud sounds and other stimuli can awake you easily. Characterized by fantastic images resembling hallucinations (hypnagogic sensations: experience of falling while sleeping). Breathing slows.
NREM-2
Second stage of sleep where as you relax more deeply for about 20 minutes. It’s distinguished by periodic burst of rapid, rhythmic brain waves called sleep spindles, which alternate with large K-complex waves. During this stage, breathing and heart rate evens out and body temp drops. You can still be awakened without much difficulty but are clearly asleep. About half of each night’s sleep is spent in this stage.
NREM-3
Third stage in sleep in which your brain emits large (high-amp) and very slow (low-frequency) delta waves. Much harder to awaken here. Most important for restoring energy levels, strengthening the immune system, and stimulating the release of growth hormone. Deep, slow-wave sleep. Night terrors occur during this stage.
Insomnia
A persistent problem in falling or staying asleep.
Unintentional Injury
Harm that is accidental, not meant to occur.
Intentional Injury
Harm that results from behaviors designed to hurt oneself or others.
Injury Control
Systematic efforts to prevent injuries from occurring and to limit the consequences of those that have already occurred.
Superchiasmatic Nucleus
Responsible for controlling circadian rhythms. Helps with sleep. Light activation plays a role in our sleep pattern. This means our sleep cycle can be disrupted by bright light, time changes, and alterations in our sleep schedule (staying up late, sleeping on the weekends).
Obesity
Excessive accumulation of body fat.
Trans Fat / Trans-Fatty Acids
Formed when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil in a food product to give it a longer shelf life and a desired taste and texture. Found to be toxic and bad and should be avoided altogether. More commonly known ad hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils. Found in many processed and packaged foods.
Saturated Fat
Primarily found in foods delivered from animal sources, including all types of meat and whole milk dairy products. Good in moderations.
Monosaturated Fats
Found in oils, such as canola, olive, and peanut oil, and in avocados. Good and healthy.
Polyunsaturated Fats
Omega-6 fatty acids: found in corn, soy bean, sesame, and safflower oils.
Omega-3 fatty acids: primarily found in oily cold water fish such as salmon and flax seeds. Very healthful.
Good and healthy.
Serum Cholesterol
Dietary cholesterol that comes from animal fats and oils, not from veggies or plant products that circulates in the blood. Found in several forms of lipoproteins.
Low-Density Lipoproteins (LDLs)
Carry cholesterol around the body for use of cells. “Bad cholesterol.” Best predictor of heart disease, not total level of serum cholesterol.
Triglycerides
The chemical form in which most fat exists in foods. Bad.
High-Density Lipoproteins (HDLs)
May offer some protections against heart disease. “Good cholesterol.”
Multiple Chronic Conditions (MCC)
Two or more chronic conditions (lasting a year or more, requiring medical attention, and/or limiting daily activities) that affect a person the same time, such as having hypertension (very high bp) and diabetes.
Set-Point Hypothesis
The idea that each person’s body weight is genetically set within a given range, or set point, that the body works hard to maintain.
Leptin
The weight-signaling hormone monitored by the hypothalamus as an index of body fat.
Lateral Hypothalamus (LH)
Seems to trigger hunger. Secretes orexin (hunger-triggering hormone) as time since last meal increases and blood sugar levels drop.
Ventromedial Hypothalamus (VMH)
Seems to trigger satiety.
Adipocytes
Collapsible body cells that store fat. Increased feelings of hunger lead to more adipocytes in body.
Pancreas
Produces insulin and assists the body in converting glucose into fat. Lower glucose leads to higher levels of insulin and hunger.
Body Mass Index (BMI)
A measure of obesity calculated by dividing body weight by the square of a person’s height.
Sociocultural Factors for Eating Disorders
Dieting and disordering eating viewed as responses to social roles, cultural ideals.
Abdominal Obesity / Male-Pattern Obesity
Excess fat around the stomach and abdomen.
Overweight
Body weight that exceeds the desirable weight for a person of a given height, age, and body shape.
Weight Cycling
Repeated weight gains and losses through repeated dieting. Not good.
Poverty Income Ratio (PIR)
The ratio of household income to the poverty threshold after accounting for inflation and family size.
Food Deserts
Geographical areas with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet.
Competitive Foods
Foods and beverages that are often high in calories, sugar, fat, and sodium that are sold in schools in vending machines, à la carte lines, and student stores.
Anorexia Nervosa
An eating disorder characterized by self-starvation, a distorted body image, and in females, amenorrhea. Health hazards: slowed thyroid function, irregular breathing and heart rhythm, low bp, dry and yellowed skin, brittle bones, anemia, light-headedness, dehydration, etc.
Bulimia Nervosa
An eating disorder characterized by alternating cycles of binge eating and purging through techniques such as compensatory behaviors as vomiting or laxative abuse.
Binge-Eating Disorder
An eating disorder in which a person frequently consumes unusually large amounts of food creates distressed feelings but no compensatory behaviors.
Family Therapy
A type of psychotherapy in which individuals within a family learn healthier ways to interact with each other and resolve conflicts.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
The theory that when our behavior is inconsistent with our thoughts, it creates psychological discomfort (dissonance) that motivates us to change either our cognition or behaviors in order to restore consistency.
Fats
Densest source of food energy.
Cholecystokinin (CCK)
Satiety hormone released by the hormone.
Biological Factors for Eating Disorders
HPA abnormalities that may promote depression are linked with both anorexia and bulimia. Bulimia linked to abnormal endorphin levels.
Psychological Factors
Competitive, semi-closed environments of some families, athletic teams, and sororities may foster disordered eating. Families of individuals with anorexia are high achieving, competitive, overprotective, etc. Families of bulimia patients are alcoholics, drug addicts, obese, and/or depressed.
Drug Use
The ingestion of a drug, regardless of the amount or effect of ingestion.
Drug Abuse
The use of a drug to the extent that it impairs the user’s biological, psychological, or social well-being.
Blood-Brain Barrier
The network of tightly packed capillary cells that separate the blood and brain.
Teratogens
Drugs, chemicals, and environmental agents that can damage the developing person during fetal development.
Agonist
A drug that attaches to a receptor and produces neural actions that mimic or naturally enhance those of a naturally occurring NT.
Partial Agonists
NTs that bind and activate receptors but elicit a smaller response than true or full agonists.
Antagonist
A drug that blocks the action of a naturally occurring NT or agonist.
Drug Addiction
A pattern of behavior characterized by physical as well as possible psychological dependence on a drug, as well as the development of tolerance.
Dependence
A state in which the use of a drug is required for a person to function normally.
Withdrawal
The unpleasant physical and psychological symptoms that occur when a person abruptly ceases using certain drugs.
Hypersensitivity Theory
Proposes that addiction is the result of efforts by the body and brain to counteract the effects of a drug to maintain an optimal internal state.
Tolerance
A state of progressively decreasing behavioral and/or physiological responsiveness to a frequently used drug.
Psychoactive Drugs
Drugs that affect mood, behavior, and thought processes by altering the functioning of neurons in the brain they include stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens (psychedelic drugs).
Hallucinogens / Psychedelic Drugs
Include marijuana and LSD (interferes with serotonin transmission). They alter sensory perception, induce visual and auditory hallucinations as they separate the user from reality, and disrupt thought processes.
LSD
Interferes with serotonin transmission. This causes hallucinations. A person may also experience out-of-body sensations, visions of tunnels and bright lights, and a reply of old memories.
Marijuana / THC
It binds with brain cannabinoid receptors. THC, the active ingredient, produces a variety of effects.
Stimulants
Includes nicotine, cocaine, ecstasy, meth, and caffeine. Makes people feel more alert and energetic by boosting activity in the CNS by altering the action of ACh, catecholamines, dopamine, and NE at the synapses. At low doses, the moderate stimulants reduces fatigue, elevate mood, and decrease appetite. Widely abused bc of their powerful reward effects. Rapid development of physical and psychological dependence.
Caffeine
Adds energy, disrupts sleep for 3-4 hours, can lead to withdrawal symptoms if used daily: headaches, irritability, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, depression.
Cocaine
Blocks reuptake of NTs and thus increases levels at the synapse of: dopamine (feels rewarding), serotonin (lifts mood), norepinephrine (provides energy). Effects on consciousness: euphoria for at least 45 min. After that, euphoria crashes into a state worse than before taking the drug, with agitation, depression, and pain. User develops tolerance and over time, withdrawal symptoms get worse and users take more just to feel normal. Cycles of overdose and withdrawal can sometimes bring convulsions, violence, heart attack, and death.
Methamphetamine
Stimulant. Triggers the sustained release of dopamine, sometimes leading to 8 hours of euphoria and energy. After that, irritability, insomnia, seizures, hypertension, violence, depression. Meth addiction can become all-consuming. It’s highly addictive and over time, will reduce baseline dopamine levels (nothing feels rewarding anymore).
Ecstasy / MDMA
A synthetic stimulant that increases dopamine and greatly increases serotonin (inhibits its reuptake). Effects on consciousness: euphoria, CNS stimulation, hallucinations, and artificial feeling of social connectedness and intimacy. Shortly after, regretted behavior, dehydration, overheating, and high bp. After that, you might have damaged serotonin-producing neurons, causing permanently depressed mood, disrupted sleep and circadian rhythm, impaired memory and slowed thinking, suppressed immune system.
Depressants
Includes alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates. Dampens activity in the CNS. Low doses reduce responsiveness to sensory stimulation, slow thought processes, and lower physical activity. Higher doses result in drowsiness, lethargy, and death. Highly addictive and implicated in many suicides, accidental overdose deaths and dependency. Reduce neural activity and slows body functions.
Drug Potentiation
The effect of one drug to increase the effects of another.
Alcohol
Slows neural processing, reduces SNS activity, and slower thought and physical reaction. Reduces memory formation caused by disrupted REM sleep and reduced synapse formation. Impairs self-control, judgement, self-monitoring, and inhibition. Increases accidents and aggression. Prolonged and excessive drinking can shrink the brain.
Barbiturates
Tranquilizers that depress CNS activity. Usually prescribed to induce sleep or reduce anxiety. Reduces memory, judgement, and concentration. Can lead to death if combined with alcohol. They block pain during surgery and produce euphoric sensations.
Opiates
Produce their effects by mimicking the body’s natural opiates, the endorphins, which help regulate our normal experience of pain and pleasure. Will cause the brain to stop producing its own endorphins. So you’ll feel physical pain when you stop taking them. Ex. morphine and heroin. Depresses NS activity and reduces anxiety and pain. High doses of opiates produce euphoria.
Biomedical Models
View physical dependence as a chronic brain disease caused by the biological effects of psychoactive drugs. The simplest model maintains that addicts inherit a biological vulnerability to physical dependence.
Concordance Rate
The rate of agreement between a pair of twins for a given trait; a pair of twins is concordant for the trait is both of them have it or not.
Withdrawal-Relief Hypothesis
Drug use serves to restore abnormally low levels of dopamine, serotonin, and other key NTs to relieve physical distress and to seek pleasure.
Reward Models
Views addiction as being motivated by pleasure seeking. Cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine increase dopamine levels, putting the brain’s reward system into overdrive. People who are dependent on one substance are more likely to be addicted to others as well.
Gateway Drug
A drug that serves a stepping-stone to the use of other, usually more dangerous.
Gateway Hypothesis
Tobacco and alcohol use historically have been powerful predictors of use of marijuana and other illicit drugs. But newer research findings indicate that environmental factors may have a stronger influence on the subsequent drug use (common liability model).
Incentive-Sensitization Theory
Two stage theory: good feelings of use use prevail and drug use becomes automated behavior. Expands on reward model, explaining that repeated drug use sensitizes the brain’s reward systems to drug-related cues. Thus, they become conditioned stimuli that evoke dopamine release and craving.
Social Learning Models
Views addiction as behavior shaped by learning, as well as by social and cognitive factors. A person’s identification with a particular drug plays a key role in the initiation and maintenance of an addiction.
Blood Alcohol Level (BAL)
The amount of alcohol in the blood, measured in grams per 100 mL. A BAL of 0.08g/100mL constitutes as legal intoxication.
At-Risk Drinking
Two or more episodes of binge drinking in the past month, or consuming an average of two or more alcoholic drinks per day in the past month.
Korsakoff’s Syndrome
An alcohol-induced neurological disorder characterized by the inability to store new memories. May be due to the body’s lack of absorption of thiamin (B vitamin) due to binge drinking.
Chronic Use of Alcohol
Weakens the immune system, damages cellular DNA, interferes with endocrine system functioning, disrupt the secretion of growth hormone, linked to decreases testosterone levels, impotence and lowered fertility in men, linked to decreased estrogen levels, menstrual disturbances and miscarriages in women. Promotes the formation of fat deposits on heart muscles and contributes to cardiovascular disease and ulcers and liver disease.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
A cluster of birth defects that include facial abnormalities, low intelligence, microcephaly, retarded body growth caused by the mother’s use of alcohol during pregnancy.
Behavioral Disinhibition
The false sense of confidence and freedom from social restraints that results from alcohol consumption. Ex. increased aggressiveness and risk taking.
Alcohol Myopia
The tendency of alcohol to increase a person’s concentration on immediate events, and to reduce awareness of distant events.
Alcohol Dependence (Alcoholism)
A state in which the use of alcohol is required for a person to function normally.
Alcohol Abuse
A maladaptive drinking pattern in which drinking interferes with role obligations.
Behavioral Undercontrol / Deviance Proneness
A general personality syndrome linked to alcohol dependence and characterized by aggressiveness, unconventionality, and impulsiveness.
Negative Emotionality
A state of alcohol abuse characterized by depression and anxiety.
Tension-Reduction Hypothesis
An explanation of drinking behavior that proposes that alcohol is reinforcing because it reduces stress and tension, in part by stimulating the release of NTs that calm anxiety and reduce sensitivity to pain.
Self-Awareness Model
Hull proposed that alcohol makes the drinker’s thinking more superficial and less self-critical, allowing some people to feel better about themselves. Alcohol distorts information processing.
Self-Handicapping Model
Drinking is an excuse for personal failure.
Alcohol Expectancy Effects
The effects of an individual’s beliefs about how alcohol affects behavior.
Aversion Therapy
A behavioral therapy that pairs an unpleasant stimulus (such as a nauseating drug, antabuse) with an undesirable behavior (such as drinking or smoking), causing the patient to avoid the behavior.
Nicotine-Titration Model
The theory that smokes who are physically dependent on nicotine regulate their smoking to maintain a steady level of the drug in their bodies.
Satiation
A form of aversion therapy in which a smoker is forced to increase his or her smoking until an unpleasant state of fullness is reached.
Affect Management Model
Proposes that smokers strive to regulate their emotional states.
Behavioral Activation (BA)
A counseling treatment that focuses on increasing engagement in valued life activities through guided goal settings.
