PSYC 235 Week 2 Blog 1 Example

Blog 1: Entry and Response

PSYC 235 Psychology of Adulthood, Blog 1 (entry and one response)

Thread by [Student Name]

The blog prompt, the writer's family details and the classmate's entry are composites standing in for the course's own blog; the textbook, Scripture and published study are real; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 235.

Blog Entry

Two years ago, at 58, my father had a stent placed after chest pain on a fishing trip. The week he came home, he bought walking shoes for the first time in his life. Every evening since, he has walked the same loop around his neighborhood, counting steps on his phone and reporting the total at dinner.

His story reflects one of the physical changes our chapters describe. Bjorklund (2015) explains that many changes once thought to be inevitable parts of aging, such as declining cardiovascular fitness and muscle strength, are strongly influenced by lifestyle. Primary aging, the gradual changes everyone experiences, is different from the diseases that become more common with age, and habits such as exercise, diet and smoking help determine how quickly those diseases arrive. My father's heart disease was secondary aging, not the inevitable kind, and his cardiologist told him plainly that what he did next would matter.

I wondered whether my father's evening walks make a measurable difference. Paluch et al. (2022) pooled data from 15 cohorts with 47,471 adults followed for a median of about seven years. Compared with adults in the lowest quartile, about 3,500 steps a day, those in the higher quartiles had 40% to 53% lower risk of death from any cause. For adults 60 and older, the benefit leveled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day, which suggests that my father does not need 10,000 steps to gain most of the advantage.

The study also changed my view of my own habits. At 31, I sit most of the day, and the benefit for younger adults continued up to 8,000 to 10,000 steps. Paul's reminder that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 6:19) has always sounded to me like a warning; now it sounds more like an invitation to care for a gift. This week I started walking at lunch with a coworker, and we are both surprised how quickly the minutes add up.

Readers: what small habit has made the biggest difference in your own health or that of someone you love?

Response to Taylor

Taylor, your blog about your mother's experience with menopause, and how little she was told to expect, was honest and helpful. One point from our reading may add to your reflection, especially your worry that you will go through the same thing without warning. Bjorklund (2015) describes menopause as a normative age-graded change with wide individual variation, and notes that many of the symptoms women fear, such as lasting mood problems, are less common than popular images suggest, while changes such as bone loss deserve more attention than they usually get. Your mother's surprise suggests that better information might have helped, and so might a doctor who raised the subject before the symptoms began. It also fits the chapter's broader point that knowing what is typical makes age-graded changes less frightening, since a person can prepare instead of being caught off guard. Do you think younger women today are better prepared than her generation was?

References

Bjorklund, B. R. (2015). The journey of adulthood (8th ed.). Pearson.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Paluch, A. E., Bajpai, S., Bassett, D. R., Carnethon, M. R., Ekelund, U., Evenson, K. R., Galuska, D. A., Jefferis, B. J., Kraus, W. E., Lee, I.-M., Matthews, C. E., Omura, J. D., Patel, A. V., Pieper, C. F., Rees-Punia, E., Dallmeier, D., Klenk, J., Whincup, P. H., Dooley, E. E., ... Fulton, J. E. (2022). Daily steps and all-cause mortality: A meta-analysis of 15 international cohorts. The Lancet Public Health, 7(3), e219-e228. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00302-9