‘Health’ Archives
Drug Culture
Drug Culture A term often associated with the rebellion, lifestyles and attitudes formed around marijuana and psychedelic drugs in the 1960s. In fact, there have been many drug cultures in postwar America, including those deeply divided by class (cocaine for the rich and powerful, crack or heroin in the ghetto) and in severity of punishment. [...]
Stroke
Stroke Damage to the brain due to interrupted blood flow. Loss of consciousness is often followed by more or less severe paralysis, depending upon the severity of oxygen deprivation to brain tissue. Strokes can usually be traced to preexisting conditions such as HYPERTENSION (high blood pressure) and diseases of the arterial walls. In cerebral [...]
Yo-Yo Dieting
Yo-Yo Dieting (diet-induced obesity) A pattern of repeated losing and regaining of weight. This pattern of weight fluctuation may carry added health risks for overweight people. People whose weight fluctuates repeatedly suffer increased mortality from heart disease as well as other causes. With onagain off-again DIETING, some people may [...]
Menopause
Menopause Postwar women can expect to live as much as one-third of their lives after menopause—a longevity that has stimulated reconceptualizations of “the change.” Once a source of shame, the menstrual cycle from beginning to end has become both a medically treatable condition and a source of female dignity and empowerment. Medical [...]
Nutrient
Nutrient An ingredient of foods that can be used by the body for growth and maintenance of health. Foods are mixtures of nutrients, and the relative amounts of the various nutrients in a given food depend on conditions of growth, storage, degree of processing, and method of cooking. DIGESTION releases nutrients from foods, which can then be [...]
Causes of Obesity
Causes of Obesity Many adults achieve an energy balance in which caloric intake matches energy expenditure. Body fat does not change very much under these conditions. Excessive body fat could be related to eating more calories or to small energy expenditure, or both. Energy expenditure refers to the calories spent for body functions, physical [...]
Polio
Polio (-myelitis) Also known as “infantile paralysis,” this viral inflammation that left healthy children and adults unable to use their limbs became a source of terror for American parents and children, especially between 1945 and 1954 when it seemed as terrifying to the American dream as nuclear destruction or lurking communism. Thanks to [...]
Substance Abuse
Substance Abuse The inappropriate use of illicit drugs or prescription medications. More than a million men seek treatment for substance abuse in the United States each year, a figure health experts believe vastly underrepresents the full extent of substance abuse on health and QUALITY OF LIFE. Most men who seek treatment have addictions to [...]
Sterility
Sterility The circumstance or condition of having no SPERM and thus being unable to impregnate a woman. Sterility may occur as a result of structural or functional abnormalities of the male reproductive organs, injury, or infection, or as the outcome of intentional disruption of FERTILITY such as VASECTOMY (surgery to cut the vas deferens, the [...]
Sun Exposure
Sun Exposure Contact of the sun’s ultraviolet rays on the surfaces of the skin. A certain level of sun exposure is healthy and necessary for the body to synthesize vitamin D, which takes place through a series of chemical reactions in the skin that are stimulated by ultraviolet radiation. Limited and controlled sun exposure also helps to [...]
