Category: What is health

The immune system, infectious illness, and COVID-19

The immune system is a complex system of tissues, cells, and organs that detects and acts against threats to your health.

The first layer of protection we have against infections is our skin – it provides a physical barrier between your organs and systems and bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins you may encounter. We also have complex microbiomes – microorganisms that exist on our skin, in our mouths and noses, and in our guts. The microbiome can protect us from certain illnesses. Finally, there are cells generated by the immune system (white blood cells like T-cells, B-cells, macrophages and others) and proteins (antibodies, cytokines and others).

Can you boost your immune system? Because it is quite complex, scientists are still unraveling all of the connections between our lifestyles and immune function. We do know there are certain behaviors that can help protect us from disease – avoiding exposures to chemicals like tobacco smoke, washing our hands, and others – https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-boost-your-immune-system.

Microorganisms that can make us sick are called pathogens – https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/infectious-diseases/in-depth/germs/art-20045289. Sometimes they live on and in our bodies without causing illness. Other times, they can multiply to the levels of causing disease.

This video provides a short overview of coronaviruses.

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that can cause COVID-19, the respiratory illness that is now pandemic. This is a novel virus, but it is related to other coronaviruses that sometimes cause seasonal colds, and have caused 2 other epidemics in the last two decades – SARS and MERS. Viruses are pieces of genetic material encased in a shell with binding proteins. They enter the body and invade our own cells in order to make copies of themselves. The below video gives a short explanation of how the coronavirus functions, but was made in March 2020, so does not contain up-to-date information on the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic began at the end of 2019. It is a respiratory disease that has a relatively long incubation period (the period of time people don’t have symptoms even if they are infected), can spread even when people don’t have symptoms, seems to mainly spread through droplet and direct contact exposure, and can cause severe illness and death in some people. Find more detailed information here – https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html

More information on SARS-CoV-2 variants is explained here:

Late in 2020, several vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have been developed and 3 have been approved for use in the United States (with several others being used in other countries). Vaccines generally work by teaching your immune system to create antibodies which can attack the pathogen when you come in contact with it. There are two vaccines that have been approved by the FDA currently are both based on the mRNA or messenger RNA molecule. These molecules instruct your cells to make a protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 (the spike protein), which your immune system recognizes as a foreign body and begins to manufacture antibodies. Another vaccine made by J & J works by introducing another harmless virus (adenovirus) in order to bring pieces of SARS-CoV-2 to your immune system. Read more about the current vaccine research here https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines

In 2022, vaccines have been approved for most age groups, we have had booster shots, wide-spread testing became possible, and treatments for COVID-19 have improved a lot. However, variants have continued to spread and have become more contagious and mitigation policies have mostly disappeared. We’ve understood the disease more and people continue to get sick and even die, but people and governments have mostly returned back to the lives we led before the pandemic started. People can still be more vulnerable to the disease, especially those who are immuno-compromised in some way, people who are getting treated for cancer, people living with chronic diseases, and others. An important issue for all is that a considerable percentage of people who get sick with COVID-19 can develop long-term symptoms, some debilitating. It is unfortunate that mitigation measures are no longer required and this disease is establishing itself as something we will continue to struggle with for years to come.

How does the body work?

Our bodies contain several different systems and are made up of tissues and organs. All the systems work together in a complicated way to break down foods, intake oxygen, expel waste, communicate between each other, process outside stimuli, and more.

Read a short description of what each body system does here https://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps and watch the short video below.

In particular, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems work together to get oxygen out of the atmosphere and move that oxygen to various organs and tissues. The lungs help to oxygenate the blood, the heart then pumps that blood out to the other parts of the body, and blood vessels circulate the oxygenated blood around the body, and bring carbon dioxide to the lungs to exhale.

Organic changes in the cardiovascular system can lead to heart disease – the leading cause of death for most demographic groups in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm One of the most common system-wide changes is atherosclerosis, the narrowing and hardening of arteries throughout the body. This process can lead to heart attacks, pain in the chest, strokes, and other consequences. Heart attacks (myocardial infarctions) usually happen when the blood supply and oxygen are disrupted to a part of the heart and the heat cells begin to die. This tends to happen because the coronary arteries become closed off or narrow.

Similarly, strokes happen either because of a bleed in the blood vessels in the brain, or a lack of blood and thus oxygen to a part of the brain. Both strokes and heart attacks can be fatal or survivable, depending on the size of the damaged tissue.

Another leading cause of death is cancer. Cancer is a name given to several related diseases. In general, when people have cancer, some cells in their bodies divide and spread to other tissues. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/what-is-cancer Cancer can happen for various reasons, but commonly it happens because of genes inherited from our parents, or exposure to toxins, infectious agents, radiation and others.

Changing habits

Read the following article. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/can-brain-science-help-us-break-bad-habits Answer the below questions fully and in full sentences.

  1. According to the article, is willpower all you need to change your health habits for the better? Why or why not?
  2. What does the article mean by “chunking?” Give an example of a health-related action you take that is “chunked.”
  3. What does the article mean by “friction?” Give a health-related example of more or less “friction” that impacts you (do not use the examples in the article – come up with another example).
  4. Does providing information about something that helps or harms our health enough to get people to change their behavior? Why or why not?
  5. Describe a health-related habit you have that you would like to change. What are some environmental changes you can think of that would help you?
  6. Think of the same health-related habit you described above. What is a positive thing you can substitute for this habit?

What is environmental health?

The environment describes all external factors that affect us – thus environmental health is the idea that these factors can influence our health, for better or worse. There is the social environment, or the people around us, and the physical environment, or all external physical factors that affects us. This can be the air we breathe, the water we drink, the neighborhoods we live in, and even the laws and policies that structure our lives.

How can a neighborhood impact our health? Try this interactive activity to find out – https://unnaturalcauses.org/interactivities_03.php. Do you live in a healthy neighborhood? New York City has been surveying and writing about its neighborhoods for several years – looks up yours here.

The kinds of toxins and pathogens we are exposed to may be a product of our environment. That is, if we live in cities with higher air pollution, or geographic locations where certain animals that carry diseases proliferate, we may be more likely exposed to these diseases. For example, you can look at maps of where cases of West Nile virus happen here – https://wwwn.cdc.gov/arbonet/Maps/ADB_Diseases_Map/index.html

Other environmental factors are built environment – roads, buildings, parks, and so on. Things like availability of bike lanes may help people reach their recommended levels of physical activity. Other things like the presence of lead paint in a home with small children can be detrimental to people’s health – the NYC report on lead levels is here https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/lead/lead-quarterly-report.pdf

Prevention and wellness

One view of medical care is that if something is wrong, you can go to the doctor to get better. The medical definition of health is often just the absence of a particular disease.

However, there is another view of health and wellness – this is the view that sees wellness as a combination of several dimensions, and sees the interaction of the person and their environment. In this view, we not only want to cure an illness, we want to prevent it from happening if possible. This is the public health model of health.

We can think of prevention as a behavior that eliminates or lowers the chances that a disease will happen in the first place (primary), or behaviors that lead to a disease being discovered early and thus treated early (secondary).

Examples of primary prevention are vaccination, wearing condoms, putting on sunscreen and hand washing. Examples of secondary prevention are Pap smears, mammograms, and other screening tests.

Image of vaccine adminstration

Here are a few more ideas for preventing disease – https://www.nih.gov/health-information/disease-prevention-toolkit.

Unnatural Causes extra credit assignment

Go to the BMCC Library website – http://lib1.bmcc.cuny.edu/ and click on Databases. Select Video Databases, then select Kanopy Streaming Videos. If you are not on campus, you will have to log in with your BMCC log-on (the same credentials you use to log into computers on campus). When you are in the Kanopy database, search for Unnatural Causes. Your result will say Collection on it. Watch the movie titled In Sickness and in Wealth.  Answer the below questions fully.

  • Define social determinants of health from the readings and from the movie. Give examples from the movie and your own life. Is the US the healthiest nation in the world? Why or why not?
  • What are some health behaviors that lead to illness?
  • What did the Whitehall study show about the connection between health and wealth? Define the wealth-health gradient.
  • How do the lives of Jim Taylor, Tondra Young, Corey Anderson and Mary Turner exemplify concepts like the wealth-health gradient and the importance of power and control? What does comparing data maps of disease rates in the different Louisville council districts show us? What might explain the differences in life expectancy, rates of disease and rates of excess death?
  • Describe examples from the film that illustrate how racism imposes an additional health burden on people of color. Give examples of both “everyday” racism (being treated unfairly) and “structural” racism (access to resources, power, status and wealth) and describe how these might affect health in different ways.
  • What kinds of employment, education, housing, or transportation polices do we need today to promote health equity? Think about some of the programs and policies that other industrialized countries in the world have. What obstacles and opportunities exist now in the United States of America? Are there any programs or policies that you have seen in your neighborhood or community?

Mortality in 1900 vs. 2010

Mortality in 1900 vs. 2010

Over the last 100 years, there have been many advances in public health and medicine. Read about it here https://www.ncdemography.org/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-of-death-1900-v-2010/.

Bar graph of top 10 causes of death in the USA in 1900 and 2010. In 1900, people died most from pneumonia and influenza, tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections. In 2010, most common causes of death were heart disease and cancer.

Consider this question: How have the causes of death changed in the last 100 years?

Consider this question: Why have the causes of death changed in the last 100 years?

Even more recently, we have had a resurgence of infectious diseases and COVID-19 has become the third leading cause of death in the US. What health behaviors can mitigate the spread of infectious illnesses? What policies can help to prevent deaths?

How can we improve our health?

What are some of the most common behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death? And is there anything we can do to change our likelihood of death from a particular cause?

The behaviors that are responsible for most deaths in the United States are: using tobacco, a sedentary lifestyle, drinking alcohol and an unhealthy diet.

Health behaviors are considered to be modifiable determinants of health – that is, you can change them! But how can people change these common behaviors? The field of health education uses several theories to explain the process of making behavior change.
• Health belief model – http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories2.html
• Theory of planned behavior – http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories3.html
• Social cognitive theory – http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories5.html
• Transtheoretical model or Stages of Change – http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories6.html

Healthy People 2020 and 2030

Our government and many health-related organizations put together a plan every 10 years to improve the health of the nation. This decade’s plan is called HealthyPeople 2030 – https://health.gov/healthypeople/about

Some of the main goals and target areas that Healthy People 2030 focuses on are:

  • Attain healthy, thriving lives and well-being free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death.
  • Eliminate health disparities, achieve health equity, and attain health literacy to improve the health and well-being of all.
  • Create social, physical, and economic environments that promote attaining the full potential for health and well-being for all.
  • Promote healthy development, healthy behaviors, and well-being across all life stages.
  • Engage leadership, key constituents, and the public across multiple sectors to take action and design policies that improve the health and well-being of all.

From: https://health.gov/healthypeople/about/healthy-people-2030-framework

It is important that we can measure how well the nation is achieving these goals. There are overall health and well-being measures, like life expectancy – https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/overall-health-and-well-being-measures; social determinants of health – https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/social-determinants-health; and leading health indicators – https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/leading-health-indicators.

HealthyPeople 2020 mid-course review shows which of the most important indicators of health are improving, staying the same, or declining – https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/data-search/midcourse-review/lhi

Leading causes of death

One way to track the health of the nation every year is with the leading causes of death which can be found here https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm for all ages in the United States. The rate of death is called mortality.

While it takes time to fully finalize leading causes of death and the final figure for 202 is not yet available, the provisional numbers have been released – https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm. COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the US in 2020.

We can also see how long people are expected to live – this is called life expectancy. Right now the average life expectancy is 78.6 years according to the CDC. You can also see differences by sex and ethnicity here – https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db328.htm.

Generally, life expectancy has been on the rise across most of the world, reflecting advances in medicine. However, in the US life expectancy has declined for the past 3 years – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-life-expectancy-drops-third-year-row-reflecting-rising-drug-overdose-suicide-rates-180970942/.

In the Untied States, there exist health disparities – differences in health status and health outcomes in different groups. One of the missions of HealthyPeople 2030 is to achieve health equity, that is the improve health for all groups and to close the gaps that currently exist between groups. The CDC in partnership with many organizations, both public and private, work to reach health equity – some examples of programs are here https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/strategies2016/index.html.