Chapter 7

Physical Activity, Exercise, and Fitness

• Physical activity is bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles requiring energy expenditure.
• Aerobic exercise is light to moderate exercising, like cardio.
• Anaerobic exercise involves strength training and sprinting.
• Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the minimum number of calories needed to maintain bodily functions at rest, depending on age, gender, weight, and activity level.
• Calories measure food energy.
• Physical fitness is attributes related to the ability to perform physical activity.
• Components of physical fitness include cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition.
• Cardiorespiratory endurance is the ability of heart, blood vessels, and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles during activity for extended periods.
• Muscular strength is the capacity of a muscle or group of muscles to exert force against heavy resistance.
• Muscular endurance is the capacity of a muscle group to repeat a movement many times or hold a position for an extended time.
• Flexibility is the degree to which an individual muscle will lengthen.
• Body composition is the amount of fat in the body compared to lean mass.
• Physical fitness is a predictor of quality of life and life expectancy.
• Metabolic flexibility enables the body to switch between different fuel sources based on availability and energy demands.
• It is important for metabolic health.

Protection Against Chronic Illness

• Osteoporosis is a disorder with declining bone density due to calcium loss
• Physical exercise protects against osteoporosis.
• Exercise reduces an older person's risk for cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
• Metabolic syndrome includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess abdominal fat, and abnormal cholesterol levels.
• Metabolic syndrome increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

Exercise Barriers and mHealth

• Some people don't exercise due to lack of self-efficacy, not realizing how much they will enjoy it, environmental barriers, lack of physical education, and lack of resources.
• mHealth uses smartphones and mobile technologies to promote health and well-being.
• Musculoskeletal injuries are a hazard of exercise, associated with the intensity and frequency.
• Behavior Change Technique (BCT) is a systematic method used to influence behavior
• Examples include, goal setting, self-monitoring, or reinforcement, often applied in health promotion and psychology.

Sleep Patterns and Loss

• Sleep patterns differ across the lifespan, with newborns sleeping 15-17 hours in segments of 3 hours but genes and environment also influence sleep patterns.
• Social jet lag occurs when the sleep schedule does not match the body's internal clock.
• Insufficient sleep relates to socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, workplace, neighborhood, and social factors.
• Poor sleep reports relates to certain work schedules like shift work, long hours, and multiple jobs.
• Irregular work schedules promote cognitive decline and disease.
• Stressful work events may report poorer sleep.
• Sleep debt accumulates after a few nights of sleep loss and can't be repaired with one long sleep.
• Sleep repairs damage, replenishes energy, and promotes neurogenesis.
• Poor sleep impairs concentration, memory, creativity, reaction time, and increases errors and accidents.
• Short sleepers are likely to be obese, physically inactive, and to smoke.
• Sleep deprivation suppresses immune functioning and promotes insulin resistance.
• Circadian rhythm is the body's natural 24-hour cycle that regulates sleep-wake patterns, hormone release, body temperature, and other physiological processes in response to environmental cues like light and darkness.

Sleep Disorders

• Insomnia is a persistent problem falling asleep, staying asleep, or getting restful sleep, affecting 10-15% of adults.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) targets underlying causes with stimulus control therapy, relaxation training, sleep environment improvement, sleep restriction, biofeedback, and sleep hygiene.
• Narcolepsy is a neurological disease causing daytime sleepiness with sudden sleep episodes lasting 5 minutes, usually beginning between 15-25 years of age.
• Deficiency in cells in the hypothalamus that produce hypocretin may regulate wakefulness.
• Sleep apnea is a serious disorder with repeated breathing starts and stops each night, depriving people of slow-wave sleep.
• People with sleep apnea don't usually recall waking episodes.
• Obese people have 4x the risk of sleep apnea and people with narrow airways also have increased risk.
• Obstructive sleep apnea, is most common, occurs when throat muscles relax, causing airway to narrow.
• Sleep apnea involves breathing that repeatedly stops and starts during sleep.
• Sleep apnea is often due to airway obstruction or brain signaling issues.
• Sleep apnea leads to poor sleep quality and health risks.

Injury Prevention and Control

• Accidents, homicide, suicide, cancer, and heart disease are the 5 leading causes of death in young people but the pattern of external causes vs. chronic conditions changes as people get older.
• Most childhood injuries are predictable and preventable.
• Injury control involves systematic efforts to prevent injuries from occurring and limiting consequences.
• Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults, with motor vehicle accidents being the most common.
• Young adults are prone to impulsiveness and poor decision making.
• Brain areas responding to excitement and pleasure are more active during adolescence than those controlling inhibition and caution.
• Injuries remain the leading cause of death in adults 35-44, including poisoning, homicide, suicide, and car accidents.
• Injury prevention targets include individual behaviors, physical environment, access to services, social environment, and societal-level factors.
• Harm reduction and injury control include primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.
• Primary prevention changes laws and societal policies.
• Secondary prevention reduces the chance of injury in high-risk situations.
• Tertiary prevention limits damage after an injury has occurred.
• Injury prevention programs include education/behavior change, legislation/enforcement, and engineering/technology.
• Occupational health psychology concerns research/practice aimed at protecting workers from occupational stress, illness, and injury, and promoting their health and well being.
• Injury control uses strategies and interventions aimed at preventing or minimizing injuries, including safety regulations, public health policies, and education on risk reduction.
• Functional plasticity is the brain's ability to adapt by shifting functions from damaged areas to undamaged areas.
• Helps compensating for injury or disease.

Summary of Additional Information

• Regular exercise and physical fitness increase physical strength, maintain bone density and a healthy weight, and reduce risks for cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoporosis, metabolic syndrome, and other chronic illnesses.
• Exercise may buffer against anxiety/stress, boost self-esteem/efficacy, help people feel more vigorous/less fatigued, improve cognitive functioning, and offer protection against neurocognitive disorders, depression, and anxiety, especially for older adults.
• Older adults face barriers to exercising like ageist stereotypes, lack of confidence/motivation, and myths undermining their health.
• Marginalized groups have lower physical activity levels, especially minoritized women and people with lower socioeconomic status.
• People are more likely to stick with exercise programs if they enjoy it, have an exercising habit, grew up in exercising families, have social support, a strong sense of self-efficacy, and believe individuals should take responsibility for their own health.
• Interventions to promote physical activity work best when matched to the stage of readiness of individual participants, emphasize behavioral strategies, and target neighborhood, community, and societal barriers in a comprehensive ecological approach.
• Health psychologists develop interventions to assist nurses/providers in promoting exercise to their patients.
• Exercise can lead to injury and resemble addictive behavior if compulsive, managing personal/emotional problems.
• Newborns sleep 15 to 17 hours a day, in segments lasting 1 to 3 hours, due to immature brain areas that regulate sleep.
• Short sleep duration links to race/ethnicity, workplace/neighborhood issues, and other social factors.
• Stressful events at work/home are associated with poorer sleep, especially if stressors are appraised as uncontrollable.
• One-third of adults experience occasional sleep problems, and 1 in 10 adults (1 in 4 older adults) complains of insomnia.
• Chronic sleep debt promotes increased body weight, suppresses immune functioning, and adversely affects metabolic, neural, and endocrine functioning, mimicking accelerated aging, as the brain uses sleep to repair damage, replenish energy stores, and promote neurogenesis.
• DSM-5 lists 11 categories of sleep disorders, including insomnia, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) improves restful sleep without pills
• Sleep hygiene focuses on improving lifestyle behaviors influencing sleep, such as limiting alcohol, caffeine late in the day, and getting regular exercise, including training in ways to wind down before bedtime.
• Risk of injury/death from injury varies across the life span, with unintentional injuries causing most injury-related deaths, but external causes account for more deaths than chronic conditions in younger people, as chronic conditions do in older age groups.
• Poor decision-making during adolescence/emerging adulthood results from the fact that different brain parts grow at different rates, as the limbic system (amygdala) matures before the prefrontal cortex, so emotional areas develop ahead of analytic areas.