All my life I’ve played sports, so I never really had to worry about fitting in a gym session. It was a big transition coming to Penn State and having to plan out what times I could go/ if I could even fit it in with my busy schedule. I started to see a change in my body that I didn’t like, so all I cared about was getting my high school self back. What I never thought about were the other benefits that exercise brings for your body. I wanted to learn more about how exercise can really help your body in more ways than just looks.

According to the Mayo Clinic, there are 7 benefits of regular physical activity. The first one is that it controls weight. I think this is the most obvious one that people automatically think of. The second reason to exercise is that it fights diseases. It can help with heart disease, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. #3: improving your mood. Exercise triggers a series of chemicals in your brain that relax you and can improve your mood. Reason 3 lingers into reason 4. Since exercise improves your mood, it also improves your energy. It obviously gives you more muscle and stamina, and these things cause your lungs and heart to function better, increasing energy. #5: better sleep. Exercise helps you fall asleep faster and be able to achieve a deeper sleep. Number 6 states that exercise can improve your sex life. Youll be more energized and feel more confident in yourself. Lastly, It gives you away to enjoy life and have a new hobby.

“Stress in America” did a survey to see what percent of Americans participated in exercise. “The survey found that more than one-third of adults (37 percent) report exercising less than once a week or not at all. Only 17 percent of adults report exercising daily.” Knowing the benefits of exercise may motivate people to work out more. “”Fifty-three percent of adults say they feel good about themselves after exercising, 35 percent say it puts them in a good mood and 30 percent say they feel less stressed.” This is a great statistic for college students. Stress is such a horrible thing that can cause awful things to happen to our body.

Knowing that exercise can help fight these issues, why not take an hour out of your day to exercise. It can help you be calm and clear your head, so you can study smarter, not harder. (like Andrew says)

I have an incredible fear of spiders. I actually cry when I see one. All of my family and friends think I’m crazy! So I was wondering, why do some people have serious phobias and others think nothing of that said fear.

According to psychologist Andrea Umbach, there are 3 main theories that can bring out a phobia in a person:

1. You are genetically predisposed to anxiety. It’s possible that the brain doesn’t regulate the fight-or-flight response properly. Or that the sympathetic nervous system is more excitable than most.
2. Direct Association. If you have a horrible experience with heights, for example you fall from up high, you may be subject to be scared of heights because of the incident.
3. Observational Learning: If we see that our parents are scared of something, we see that they are scared and we become scared.

Another theory in another article found that your head could just make up the phobia. It states, “If we are given enough (possibly inaccurate) information, we may just “figure out” things are scary via instructional fear acquisition. Certain horror films are particularly good at this, presenting everyday things like birds as things to be feared, associations which stay with people for a long time”.

This is kind of terrifying because there could be no phobia even present, but your brain makes you so frightened of absolutely nothing.

“19 million people suffer from specific phobias. Women are twice as likely to be affected as men. Typically begins in childhood”. This information comes from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Knowing this information, what can we do to help people cope with phobias?

Helpguide.org, A trusted non-profit guide to mental health and wellbeing, talks about 3 approaches to help you get over a fear. The first suggestion they give is ‘Climbing up the Fear Ladder”. It gives the example of getting over a serious fear of dogs:

The second phobia treatment is learning relaxation techniques. Deep breathing is a great skill to have to help calm you down and be able to get over a super stressful situation.

Lastly, Challenging your negative thoughts. People who suffer from phobias overestimate their fears and underestimate their ability to cope with the fear. This gives the phobia all the power. By challenging the phobia and thinking through it (easier said than done) you have better control of your anxiety and the ability to overcome the fear.

I, however, could not find any statistics proving how these methods work. Even though there is pretty significant scientific evidence, i think these topics could be very good for in depth hypothesis testing and studies. These tests could show errors in these methods, such as false positives or actual causation.

In conclusion, there are many triggers that can cause a phobia to begin, but there are also lots of way that a person can cope with their phobia.

All throughout my life I have been playing sports. I started with soccer, and once I began high school I started playing lacrosse. I considered myself to be a pretty good player and I practiced like crazy. I was always reliable in games with no pressure or had some good competition, but once it came to playoff games I was always a mess. I didn’t know what came over me, but I just became super stressed and wasn’t my normal self. Apparently this happens to many people and it become such an issue there are actually sports psychologists. My question is, if I would have had a sports psychologist, would it have helped me?

According to the American Psychological Association, “Some athletes seek help from a sport psychologist or other exercise and sport psychology professional when they have a problem”. Such problems can include, enhancing performance, coping with the pressures of competition, recovering from injuries, and keeping up an exercise program.

“Whenever I speak to athletes and coaches, I ask them how important the mind is to sport success. With few exceptions, the response is that the mind is as or more important than the physical and technical side of sports”, states Dr. Jim Taylor. So with all my physical training for lacrosse, why didn’t I ever have any mental training? Dr. Taylor says, “when compared to its physical and technical counterparts, sport psychology clearly has second-class status. While all sports programs and teams at every level of competition have full-time technical and conditioning coaches, few have full-time sport psychologists. Moreover, when sport psychology is offered to athletes, its presence is usually vastly different from the physical conditioning and technical regimens that ath
letes benefit from”. He is saying that sports psychology isn’t as well regarded as the classic physical training that athletes partake in almost everyday.

One example of someone using a sports psychologist was Marc Andre Fluery. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I always loved watching the Penguins. A couple years ago they made it to the playoffs. Marc Andre Fleury was incredible the ENTIRE year, but then choked come playoffs. They had to play the backup goalie because he was performing better. The Penguins general manager said that, “Fleury doesn’t have physical issues. His playoff failures would appear to be more in his head…Goalie is a delicate position, no different than a golfer or a tennis player: You’re on your own a lot” After he started therapy, he seemed to be a different person. He was much better in situations u
nder a ton of pressure and seemed to be much more confident with himself. Everyone seemed to think this was because of the help of the psychologist, proving that it was successful.

This is a method sports psychologists use(see figure). Using this model, doctors can help identify the problems and be able to help their patients.

Overall, I did not find any overriding statistics that proved that sports psyc
hology works, but I did find many successful cases. Once again, proving that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but there is a lot of evidence that
shows the sports psychology can be a very helpful tool in an athletes life.

In psychology, we were learning about marriage and divorce. A fact from our textbook stated “Divorce is a fact of life within 20 years of marriage for at least 40% of current marriages.” (Positive Psychology and Wellbeing: Applications for Enhanced Living) This struck me as a crazy number and got me thinking of how much divorce can impact people, especially children.

Robert. E. Emery, Ph.D., conducted a study to see what effect divorce has on children. His study was to see if mediation, intervention in a dispute in order to resolve it, could positively impact the long term effects of divorce for children. In his study, he used random assignment like we had talked about in class. He flipped a coin to see if the families being studies would go to mediation or adversary settlement. The sample was young families with a low income. The study was set up that the mediation was around 5 years and focused mostly toward the grief aspect of divorce.

The first part of the study showed that most of the families who went through mediation stayed out of court. It also stated that when the mediation failed, parents tried to work things out with the help of
lawyers.

Another graph that I found to be interesting was the involvement of the parents in litigation vs. mediation. The graph clearly shows that when couples going through a divorce went through mediation instead of litigation, the child had much more involvement with both parents than just the one we live with.

In an article written by divorce.usu.edu, “Children of divorce are 2-3 times more likely to experience a divorce compared to children who did not experience a divorce growing up”. Contrary to what the above article stated, this article says that divorce really impacts children BEFORE the divorce actually occurs, instead of year after. However, it still agrees that it will has effects throughout their lives, just not as significant. “Children are developing physically, socially, emotionally, educationally, morally, and spiritually; research shows that divorce can affect children in each of these developmental areas”.

I discovered another article from the MDRC. Their mission is to build knowle
dge to improve social policy. This article is titled “The Effects of Marriage and Divorce on Families and Children”. Author Gordon Berlin writes, children who grow up in an intact, two-parent family with both biological parents present do better on a wide range of outcomes than children who grow up in a single-parent family. Single parenthood is not the only, nor even the most important, cause of the higher rates of school dropout, teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, or other negative outcomes we see; but it does contribute independently to these problems”.

This means that children whose parents are still in a successful marriage performed better on certain tasks and had less of a risk of teenage pregnancy and juvenile delinquency. By no means does this suggest that divorce will cause any of these problems or deem that someone is less intelligent to complete tasks. It just shows the correlation between divorce an
d these factors. Correlation is not causation.

Overall, I have found that divorce does have some impacts on children, but the way parents handle their divorce can GREATLY impact how their child lives the rest of their life.

Another thing that I found interesting from the Antimicrobial Stewardship was that I had no idea that there was a problem with overuse of antibiotics before I went. Antibiotic resistance is such a serious thing that myself and many others could be hurt by. This got me thinking about how patients are abusing their medications and how we can become more aware of this issue.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration states that “Misuse and overuse of these drugs, however, have contributed to a phenomenon known as antibiotic resistance. This resistance develops when potentially harmful bacteria change in a way that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of antibiotics.” Knowing the harmful impacts could make people more aware of how they are hurting themselves. When you take antibiotics you do not need, there are serious consequences. Some of them are longer illnesses, more doctor visits, more risk of bacterial infections, according to the FDA.

The Centers for Disease Control wrote an article titled “Antibiotics Aren’t Always the Answer” in order to help educate the public. They say, Taking antibiotics for viral infections, such as colds, flu, most sore throats, bronchitis, and many sinus or ear infections:

• Will not cure the infection
• Will not keep other people from getting sick
• Will not help you or your child feel better
• May cause unnecessary and harmful side effects
• May contribute to antibiotic resistance, which is when bacteria are able to resist the effects of an antibiotic and continue to cause harm”

People think that taking antibiotics will improved your infection, help you keep others healthy, but the CDC is emphasizing that these those thoughts are not true.

They are trying to push that these antibiotics WILL do more harm to you.

The CDC also has an awareness week about this topic, which the Antimicrobial Stewardship was included in. “Each year in the United States, at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result of these infections.”

This statistic is shocking and I believe that there should be more of an awareness to promote this issue. Even though the government is involved and has the ability to help stop it, I think more effort should be put in. One solution I thought of was for your pediatrician to be required to state the reasons for not prescribing medication. From personal experience, I have been upset when my doctor doesn’t give me medicine when I feel awful. My thought process is that everything can be fixed with antibiotics. Since I don’t receive the antibiotics, in my head I feel like I wont get better as fast, so I don’t let myself feel better. If I would have known that antibiotics wouldn’t have helped me fight my miserable virus and drinking a ton of water would help, I would feel a lot better. A simple explanation could have changed my entire outlook on the illness. Mind of matter is a real thing that can dramatically impact your outlook on your health.

Overall, if awareness increases I believe that we can drastically reduce the amount of people who encounter the issue of antibiotic resistance.

When I rolled out of bed at 7 AM for the Antimicrobial Stewardship, I had every intention of just showing up and paying no attention in order to earn the extra credit. To my surprise, I found all of the speakers to be extremely interesting and bringing up points that I had no idea were a problem in our world today. They weren’t just speaking about any tiny problem, but serious issues that are putting our population in danger. The main topic of discussion was that doctors are prescribing antibiotics when they don’t need to be. This got me thinking, why would they give their patient medicine that they know is not going to work. They have been through years and years of schooling to be able to educate their patients and tell them that they will get better without said antibiotic, yet they just hand them the prescription and they are on their way. This was touched upon by one of the speakers, but I wanted to go more in depth to really have an understanding of why educated medical practitioners were prescribing unnecessary antibiotics.

A study was funded by Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts) to conduct research on the problem of antibiotic resistance. (article) “The survey of 1,000 general practitioners found 90% of respondents felt pressure from patients to prescribe them antibiotics…Nearly half – 45% – of the GPs surveyed said they had prescribed antibiotics for a viral infection, knowing it would not be effective.” This proves that 90% of the doctors surveyed felt that it WAS NOT necessary to give their patients the medication, yet they did it anyway. Also, within the 45%, the doctors could have explained that their virus would not get bet
ter with the medication and refuse to give it to their patients. I realize that it is easier said than done, but this is a serious issue that we are facing.

A study conducted by the National Center of Biotechnology Information looked at the different reasons why doctors would want to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics. An issue that proved difficult was maintaining doctor-patient relationships. “One doctor who described himself as a low prescriber highlighted his difficulties in negotiating with patients who dem
anded antibiotics because they believed in their effectiveness.” Other factors that came into play were clinical experience, delayed prescribing, and their views on antimicrobial resistance.

The University of Virginia gives advice about asking your doctor of antibiotics. They state that “In general, it is best not to ask your doctor for an antibiotic. As with any other treatment, physicians are not supposed to give you an antibiotic unless it is needed… There is nothing wrong with asking questions, but listen to what your physician has to say.” They go on to explain how serious of a problem is it to take antibiotics that you do not need. It will not make you get better any faster and it could hurt you detrimentally in the long run.

In conclusion, when you feel sick, you should not immediately expect to be given an antibiotic to feel better.

We are all guilty of using our cell phone in bed. Whether its checking your nightly twitter updates or scrolling through instagram before falling asleep, its bound to happen. But could it actually be causing you more problems than just lack of sleep?

A recent CBS news article titled “Cell phones & cancer: 8 dumb ways to boost possible risk” sheds light on facts that I haven’t been considered before. According the the article, Cell phones pump out electromagnetic radiation whenever they’re on – which means sleeping with one nearby boosts your exposure all night long.”

According to an article tiled “Cell Phones and Brain Cancer Protection From Someone Who Experienced It and Found the True Solutions”, electromagnetic radiation took a
serious toll on their body. This person has cancer and is also exposed to the radiation. They described that the radiation from cell phones can damage DNA. This damage turned their DNA cells into cancer cells because of the radioactivity. This is an extreme case, but also proves how dangerous this could be.

This radiation has even more negative impacts. According to mic.com
, the electromagnetic radtion “delays and disrupts sleep. Radiation interferes with our body’s ability to repair itself from any damage suffered throughout the day…radiation can also impact the brain’s stress system. Couple the stress caused by radiation with the fact that our phones inherently bring us stress by allowing us to check and recheck all our applications, and we are now in an infinite loop of anxiety. This keeps us extremely alert and makes it difficult to wind down for the day and fall asleep.” This means that not only does it inhibit the body from repairing itself after a long day, it also gives us more anxiety.

At the end of the day, not sleeping with your phone right next to you isn’t a huge inconvenience, but it could end up saving your life.

My mom is an avid runner and refuses to run on a treadmill no matter what. She would rather run in negative degree weather than do an hour inside on the treadmill. She just says its boring, but she might actually be helping herself in the long run.

According to Time magazine, “ ‘Most running injuries are overloading injuries that involve muscle, cartilage, bone or tendons wearing down over time,’ Davis explains. While there isn’t a lot of good research on this, Davis says those types of injuries probably occur more frequently when you repeat the exact same running motion thousands and thousands of times—as you would on a treadmill or a flat, consistent stretch of pavement. “

This means that running on a treadmill subjects your body to wearing down faster than if you were going to run on a path or an area that is not just flat and straight.

Another issue is that using a treadmill is actually not a natural way of moving. Livestrong
says, “Since the rubber belt essentially pulls your feet out from under you when you run, you don’t have to push off as much to generate forward momentum. This affects your gait and foot strike pattern, which can affect your joints if you’re used to running with a natural gait outdoors.”

What I have gathered is that if you run on a treadmill once or twice no harm is going to be done to your body, but once you start a daily routine on the treadmill you may be facing some serious consequences.

Cell phones are both a blessing and a curse for our generation. They provide us with easy communication and social media, but are said to be our downfall in social skills and communication in person. However, cell phones may be having an even more serious impact on our lives.

As shown on the graph, 84% of teens of the ages of 16 and 17 own cell phones. This is turning into a major issue because it is causing arthritis in teens.

“Doctors are starting to see growing numbers of young adults with arthritis pain today as a result of the gaming and texting they did as kids 5 or 10 years earlier.”, according to Everyday Health. A study was done and it proved that 1 in every 10 iphone users report pain in their thumbs, showing signs of the dreaded texting arthritis. That is 10% of iphone users having developing arthritis.

Skeptics could say they didn’t believe this because it could be pain from a different injury or just a minor ache that has nothing to do with texting. However, arthritis can take a long time to show symptoms. So even if you aren’t showing symptoms yet, it is very possible you will develop texting arthritis at some point in your life.

Humans are one of the only species that don’t sleep for short periods throughout the day. If so many other species of animals have different sleep schedules, why don’t we do it like that? Work for a couple hours then take a nap in a continuous cycle. As you might assume, this would not be possible for most humans. Our world works in a way where you do as much you can in a day then sleep for as much time you have left. These animals are essentially just taking naps, but do naps benefit humans?

A benefit of napping is that after a short nap, you can wake up feeling more alert and responsive. A study done by myth busters showed that driving while you were drowsy is just as dangerous as driving while you were drunk. According to the Sleep Foundation, “Naps can restore alertness, enhance performance, and reduce mistakes and accidents. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness 100%.” The sleep organization also stated that napping is just a helpful getaway. It provides the body with relaxation and rejuvenation.

Even though there are all of these great benefits to taking a midday nap, there can be some drawbacks. According to Sleep expert Dr. Michael Breus ‘If you take it longer than 30 minutes, you end up in deep sleep. Have you ever taken a nap and felt worse when you woke up? That’s what’s happening — you’re sleeping too long and you’re going into a stage of sleep that’s very difficult to get out of.’

Dr. Breus is saying that the ideal nap time is no more than 30 minutes. If you exceed this amount of time, the nap wont be effective.

In summary, naps can be greatly beneficial in short lengths, but hurtful if you exceed the ideal time.

According to Healthline, “350 million people worldwide suffer from depression.” This accounts for 5% of the world’s population. This is an astonishing number of people. With all the medications that are already in the health community and more developing, you would think this number would be less. What if there is something else that could help treat depression?

This is where the “love hormone” comes in. This hormone is actually just oxytocin, but it is called to love hormone for a reason. According to UC San Diego News Center, “In humans, oxytocin is released when they hug or experience other pleasant physical touch, and it plays a part in the human sexual response cycle,” The oxytocin that is released actually changes how the brain processes emotions. “It’s said that the eyes are the window to the soul…they certainly are the window to the emotional brain.  We know that the eye-to-eye communication, which is affected by oxytocin, is critical to intimate emotional communication for all kind of emotions – love, fear, trust, anxiety.” This impact on emotions shows that people with depression can begin to change their behavior and act in a way that shows their symptoms of depression have lessened.

However, there are many skeptics to this theory. According to Psychology Today
,  a “cure” was not possible for these disorders (depression) as oxytocin is only one of the contributing causes, and that simply replacing oxytocin in patients would have only limited effects.

In conclusion, having strong relationships with important people in your life is vital to having a better outlook, but it isn’t enough to completely cure depression.

Most classes at Penn State are either 50 or 75 minutes long. This doesn’t seem like a very long amount of time, but it actually could be. “Some psychologists claim the typical student’s attention span is about 10 to 15 minutes long…levels vary widely based on factors like motivation, emotion, enjoyment, and time of day.”, according to informED.

So why are classes so long if it seems that no one is getting much out of it?

A study conducted in 1985 — even though this may seem like the data isn’t relevant anymore, it actually makes it more relevant. This study was conducted before cell phones and computers could be a distraction to students – “which tested students on their recall of facts contained in a 20-minute presentation. While you might expect that recall of the final section of the presentation would be greatest— the part heard most recently — in fact the result was strikingly opposite. Students remembered far more of what they’d heard at the very beginning of the lecture. By the 15-minute mark, they’d mostly zoned out.” In other words, students were only able to pay attention during the beginning of class.

This proves that students attention spans are far smaller than what they are
thought to be. So what can we do about this? Obviously you cant just give 10 minute lectures and be done for the day. One way to try to improve the attention span of students would be having them put away their cell phones and limiting laptop use to strictly note taking for class purposes. This would remove side conversations with friends and whatever gossip is happening on social media.
Another way to keep students engaged is to interact with them in lecture. By asking question or using clickers, you keep the students attention because they are going to need to know the answers to these questions.
All in all, it is critical that professors use techniques for keeping their students attention span so that they can learn the most they can learn.

hi everyone! my name is Annie Kukieza. I’m from a suburb of Pittsburgh, about 20 minutes from the city. I love the city and am super proud to call it home.

I’m currently enrolled in DUS but i hope to be a part of the business school and major in supply chain. I played soccer all my life and lacrosse in high school. I love sports and being active. I am also obsessed with the beach and my dog. 

Science has never really been my thing and I have never really had any interest in it. I could never be a science major because i hate chemistry more than any other subject.  However, i liked the idea of this course and how it was more practical and could really relate to everyday life.

I’m really exited for this class and can’t wait to go about a different way of thinking.