General health charts can be found in classrooms, doctor’s offices and hospitals, and are useful in explaining to students, and patients, the importance of a healthy balanced diet, exercise and smoking cessation in maintaining optimum health at any age.

Showing both a healthy lung and a smoker’s lung in the same diagram, the latter in disturbing shades of greenish gray, the Effects of Smoking chart examines the risk factors for smoking, including stroke, oral cancer, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), cancer of the esophagus, heart disease, gastric disease and bladder cancer. Smoking is the number one cause of bladder cancer, and most often strikes women, whose reproductive health is equally impacted, as is the health of the fetus.

Between 1997 and 2007, the incidence of diabetes in the United States rose by 90 percent when adjusted for age. This phenomenal increase is largely due to sedentary lifestyles and diets laden with fats and simple carbohydrates. The Understanding Diabetes chart is a superb teaching tool for explaining the two types of diabetes (I, and II) and their complications, which can range from Type I neuropathies, and consequent limb loss, to Type II and heart attack or stroke. The chart also depicts and discusses glucose metabolism, insulin production (and its lack) and the common symptoms patients should be aware of.

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