Chapter 1: A Healthy Foundation Lesson 2: Influences on Your Health

BELL ACTIVITY  How do the people around me affect my health?

What affects your health?  The choices you make and the ways you think and act have a strong effect on your total health.  These are the parts of your life over which you have quite a bit of control.  To make the best choices, you’ll need to understand what these factors are and what you can do about them.

Putting the Puzzle Together  Every person is an individual.  Each life unfolds in its own way, guided and molded by both personal choices and outside factors.

Heredity and Environment  Heredity: the passing on of traits from biological parents to children.  Some traits passed on through heredity are:  Skin, eye, and hair color.  Body Build  Growth patterns  The tendency to get certain diseases.

Heredity traits are…  “Built in” – you can’t choose them!  Example: If your family has a history of high numbers of dental cavities, you should pay extra attention to your dental care.

More About Heredity  Scientists around the world have undertaken an extensive exploration of the genetic factors that contribute to human development. The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health are coordinating the Human Genome Project, a 15-year effort to identify and map all the genes on every chromosome in the human body. (The term genome refers to all the genetic material in the chromosomes of a particular organism.) The U.S. project is part of a worldwide investigation into genetics. Over 1,000 scientists representing more than 50 countries are members of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). Thus fart, results of these studies indicate that there may be a specific gene for nearly every human ability.

Environment…  Environment is all the living and nonliving things that surround you.  Your home, neighborhood, and school.  The air you breathe and the water you drink.

Closing Questions/Review  Define the terms heredity and environment.  Describe how you can use information about hereditary traits to make health decisions.  Identify three factors, other than heredity and physical environment, that can have an influence on a person’s health.  Why are there laws about allowable levels of environmental pollution?