Knowledge and practices of teenagers about health: implications for the lifestyle and self care

Objective: This study aimed to describe the knowledge of adolescents about health and what they do to remain healthy and promote their own health. Methods: Qualitative research, whose benchmark is the Theory of Social Representations. The subjects were 21 adolescents who were approached with the help of the Snowball technique. There were semi-structured interviews and the analysis of the thematic content was applied. Results: The results show that health is understood in the light of elements of the biomedical paradigm and the social production of health, and the practices are aligned with the requirements of each of the paradigms. Conclusion: It is concluded that adolescents have knowledge about their health and about the problems that may result from bad habits, which are more associated to such cultural practices than to actual information.