Health in Everyday Life

In this course, students will learn how diseases, medicines, foods, luxury items (alcohol and tobacco), poisonous animals and plants, and other items around them affect the human body. Instructors with practical experience as medical researchers and pharmacists give comprehensive lectures to share basic and somewhat specialized information (15 sessions in total).

homeostasis, health, lifestyle, disease, drug

Week 1: Class overview; understanding how the human body works (What is homeostasis?)
Week 2: Understanding how the human body works (How is food digested and absorbed?)
Week 3: Understanding how the human body works (How are nutrients used in the body?)
Week 4: Understanding the effects of health foods and medicines (How do vitamin drinks work?)
Week 5: Understanding the effects of health foods and medicines (What are health foods?)
Week 6: Understanding things that cause sickness if consumed (poisonous mushrooms and other poisonous plants around us)
Week 7: Understanding things that cause sickness if consumed (poisonous seafood)
Week 8: Understanding the effects of alcohol and tobacco on the human body
Week 9: Understanding the effects of pollution on the human body (What do heavy metals, sulfur oxides, environmental hormones, and PM 2.5 do to the body?)
Week 10: Understanding disinfectants (structures of microorganisms and disinfection mechanisms)
Week 11: Understanding the mechanisms of familiar illnesses and countermeasures (allergies)
Week 12: Understanding the mechanisms of familiar illnesses and countermeasures (cold)
Week 13: Understanding the mechanisms of familiar illnesses and countermeasures (muscle pain, gout, anemia)
Week 14: Understanding the effects of lifestyle on the human body (What are lifestyle-related diseases?)
Week 15: Research on the human body and how it works (introduction to familiar academic fields); class questionnaire

Syllabus (Japanese site only)