Physical Health and Well-Being

Emphasize to your client that it would do his or her body a favor to get an annual physical from a physician. Most people do not blink an eye to get a car in for a tune-up but for some reason are not as faithful about attending to their bodies. If they have medical conditions that require certain treatments or taking medicine, they should do what they are told to do by their doctors, and reliably. After all, we will only get as far in this life as our bodies will take us  

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Abuse. We have all heard the terms substance abuse, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, cocaine abuse, and so on. In one sense, any illicit use of a substance is abuse. For example, from the legal point of view, whenever someone smokes crack (even if it is the only time), (s)he has broken the law and abused cocaine. Likewise, if you borrow a prescription sedative or pain reliever from a friend, then you have similarly abused that medication. That is an appropriate use of the term in many cases, but this is not customarily the way that mental health specialists use the term. From our perspective, substance abuse involves a pattern of repeated use over time that results in problems in one or more areas. These include compromised physical health and well-being, legal proceedings, job status, and relationships as well as overall day-to-day functioning. 

The Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA) and the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate (SCI) are, thus, two enforcement authorities that work with environmental issues, though in different respects. The Swedish Work Environment Authority focuses on factors that have an impact on the mental, social and physical health and well-being of employees, while the Swedish Chemicals Inspectorate focuses on factors that influence toxic levels in nature and thereby both directly and indirectly the health and well-being of human beings as well. While SWEA s activity is dominated by inspections of workplaces in public and private organisations, inspections play only a minor role in the activities of SCI. See Table 18.1 for further differences between the authorities. 

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is the principal federal agency for biomedical research on the effects of chemical, physical, and biologic environmental agents on human health and well-being. ContactNAEiTS, PO Box 12233, 104 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Phone 919-541-3212. 

The construction industry and the industries which supply it have a vital role to play in the evolution of a culture of clean technology. Buildings have a crucial impact on the physical and economic health and well-being of the individuals, communities, and organizations which they are intended to support. The global impact of the architectural environment is increasingly evident. It is necessary for everyone involved to... 

If physical health is hard to define and subject to the pressures of modern society, mental health presents a more complex situation. Any variation from normal behaviour is tolerated less and there is an expectation that it should be controlled or cured but longer life expectancy and changes in social organization challenge the mental health and well-being of many individuals. 

The IRB is charged, by federal, state, and local institutions with ensuring that principal investigators adequately protect the health and well-being of individuals whose participation may cause them to be at increased risk to hazards, defined broadly as physical, psychologic, sociologic, and legal. Thus, it is impossible to conduct clinical research in humans that would not affect one or more of these areas. 

In other words, what does a computer really need to know How much is there in the human body that some advanced power in computers would need to monitor our eternal health and well-being How many billion bytes of RAM (random access memory, a physical memory of a computer) would a computer need, playing the part of a health guardian ... 

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