The Effects Of Video Games On The Heart Essays -

The Effects Of Video Games On The Heart The Effects of Video Games on the Heart For: Piedmont Academy Science Project November 30, 1999 The Effects of Video Games on the Heart In order to determine the effects of video games on the heart, we must look at several different things. First, we must determine which specific areas we want to investigate. Looking at increased heart rate and blood pressure, we need to determine the average maximum heart rate for the age group being tested. We must determine what factors can cause one's heart rate to increase, and we must look at the current studies in regard to the various social effects of video and other electronic games. The main way that we increase our heart rate is through exercise, and even then health care professionals recognize the importance of pacing yourself. In order to pace yourself, you must determine your target heart rate. To do this, you must measure your pulse periodically as you exercise and stay within 50 to 75 percent of you maximum heart rate. A simple rule of thumb is if you can talk and walk at the same time, you are not working too hard. If you can sing and maintain your level of effort, you are probably not working hard enough. If you get out of breath quickly, you are probably working too hard, especially if you have to stop and catch your breath. The target heart rate chart is broken down from twenty years of age to seventy years. The target heart rate zone of fifty to seventy-five percent for people of twenty years is 100-150 beats per minute with the average maximum heart rate of 100% at 200 beats per minute. The second main contributor to increasing your heart rate is through stress. Doctors have determined that the problem with stress is that our body thinks we are still cavemen. There hasn't been time for us to evolve physiologically from the high-threat, short-duration stress situations that primitive man faced to the relatively low-threat, long-duration stresses of modern society. When your body receives a message that you are under stress, it automatically thinks you are going to do one of two things, fight or run away. The body does not know how to temper its response to deal with the week-long pressure of dooming deadlines or other stresses that we deal with daily. This overkill response, in time, takes a physical toll, especially on the cardiovascular system. When you are under stress, you are not thriving. Your blood pressure is elevated, your blood clotting mechanism is working at full force, your heart is beating faster than normal and your metabolic rate is up. Keep it for hours and you will be exhausted, for years and you are headed for a heart attack. Doctors place stress as the secondary risk factor for heart disease. Stress and video games often go hand in hand. During the last several decades, video games have emerged as one of the most popular forms of adolescent entertainment. In the United States alone, video game revenues total ten billion dollars annually. On the average, children who have home video games play with them approximately ninety minutes a day. Some of the trends in game playing are disturbing some observers. A 1993 study asked 357 seventh and eight graders to list their preferences among five categories of video games. The study found that fantasy violence topped the list at thirty-two percent. It also find that boys who play violent games tend to have a lower self-concept in the areas of academic ability, peer acceptance and behavior. The most interesting is the possible link between playing violent video games and subsequent aggressive behavior. Boys aged eight to fourteen are the core audience for video games. Another study found that a series of three video games played under three increasing levels of stress elicited progressively higher values of blood pressure and heart rate. Both the race and gender of the subjects affected the reactivity. Heavy video game players have a difficult time with the regard to discharging aggression, and have a lower frustration tolerance. It has been found that hostility is increased when playing highly aggressive video games and mildly aggressive games. Subjects playing the high aggression

Death of Illusion essays

Death of Illusion essays The Federals were thick on the ground, lying all about in bloody heaps, bodies disassembled in every style that man could imagine. Inmas only thought looking on the enemy was, Go Home. Home was a place called Cold Mountain in North Carolina. The Civil War novel, by Charles Frazier describes horrific human suffering, Frazier based his story on local history and family stories handed down from his great-great grandfather. He does an excellent job with character development, along with descriptive details in each setting. There are three main characters; Inman, Ada and Ruby. Though separated by war, the characters share a common goal, survival. The realities of their hardships and suffering cause the death of the naive illusions, and lead to the changes necessary to survive. Until the war, Inman had spent his life on Cold Mountain. Like many Young men, he thought the war would be a short duration and an awesome adventure. But it turned into his worst nightmare. Fraziers descriptions of battles like Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg and Petersburg, paint a vivid and gory picture of death and destruction. The war ended for Inman after the battle of Fredericksburg. Wounded, he literally walks away from the war. Inman is not portrayed as a deserter or a coward, but as a broken man who had seen more than he could bear. His walk home to his girlfriend, Ada, was in itself, another war. He faced constant danger, fear, and starvation. He saw himself as disgusting, because of all that he had seen and participated in. Only his need to survive kept him going. Ada was spoiled and sheltered by her preacher father. When he died shortly after the war started, Ada was totally alone. Because she only had social skills, her own war was just beginning. Her only inheritance was a neglected farm. Adas education did not include even the simplest skill, like cooking. She had little hope of running a farm, ...

Lack of Health Care for the Working Class Research Paper

Lack of Health Care for the Working Class - Research Paper Example However, despite dramatic increases in expenditures, inequities exist within the Medicaid system that limit distribution of health care resources and affect health outcomes. Employer-sponsored, private health insurance coverage has declined gradually since the late 1970s (Jacobson and Buchmueller, 2007). In 2010, the number of uninsured Americans approached 49.9 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010a). Two major trends are driving the decline: First, changes in the labor market, including the decline in manufacturing jobs, the increase in service-jobs, and the growth in temporary and part-time employment have produced more "benefit-poor" occupations. Second, declining real wages, combined with employer moves to shift rising health care costs onto employees via increased premiums, deductibles and copayments, has reduced the numbers of employees who can afford health care coverage and the extent of that coverage (Swartz, 2009). Working class and women are especially vulnerable to lack of access to employer-sponsored coverage, given the structure of private health care insurance. In the United States, individuals generally qualify for employer-sponsored health insurance plans in one of two ways; as workers in occupations where health insurance benefits are offered to employees, or as dependents or spouses of covered workers (Kim & Muntaner, 2011; Buchmeuller and Valletta 1999). Direct coverage, as workers, is now and has been limited for working class and women due to their historic and continuing concentration in the secondary sector of the labor market. That is, lower working class and women are more likely than others to be employed in the kinds of occupations that are becoming more prevalent and that are less likely to offer coverage; i.e. service jobs, non-unionized jobs, and part-time and temporary work. Indirect, or spousal coverage, though limited to women legally wed to men whose employers offer th e benefit, provides