Health Across the Life Span Choose Your Future: Vaping and Tobacco Right now, you may have a hard time seeing how small decisions impact your health. It is important to remember, however, that choices you make regarding your health have far-reaching impacts on your future. Starting with the box at the top of the flowchart, walk through hypothetical decisions you could make during your life. Certain lifestyles are associated with a higher risk for negative health consequences, while other lifestyles have a lower risk for those same consequences. Choices made at each step have impacts that ripple out toward your future. Practice Your Skills Make Decisions Answer the questions in the flowchart and determine your level of risk in the activity. Look at each decision and analyze why you chose the path that you did. What influenced your decision to make one choice over another? For each scenario in the flowchart, write a short scene in which you decide to make the healthier decision. Use refusal skills and the facts you learned in this lesson to back up your decisions. You notice that certain friends always offer you cigarettes when you hang out. Do you continue to hang out with them? No Yes Your new friend group after high school vapes. Do you join them? You have a crush, but find out that person smokes. Do you still date your crush? Yes A friend offers you a cigarette at a party. Do you accept it? Yes You and your partner are having trouble conceiving. Your doctor recommends that you stop smoking. Do you continue smoking? Yes Your friend starts to vape and says it is harmless. Do you try it? No Yes Your doctor recommends that you quit using tobacco products to improve your shortness of breath and other health issues. Do you ignore this advice and continue to use tobacco products? No Avoiding tobacco products and not staying around people who smoke limits your exposure to the harmful effects of tobacco. You have a good chance of living a healthy life. Good job! Watch out! The longer you expose yourself to the harmful effects of tobacco, the harder it will be to counter the negative health effects, such as cancer, heart disease, and respiratory conditions. The health benefits of quitting tobacco begin rapidly, even for lifelong users. Within days, coughing, blood pressure, and heart rate decrease. The longer someone goes without exposure, the greater the health benefits. Keep making positive choices! No No Yes Yes High Risk No Mild Risk Low Risk No Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. 376 Unit 4 Avoiding Hazardous Substances