Webinar EM&GH

by Brittany Templin·4 views·Updated Dec 2, 2021

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Hi everyone.
My name is Brittany and I'm doing this presentation
on obesity prevalence and a few of the factors that
I found our
possibly influencing the
increased rate of obesity our communities today.
I found this concept to be extremely interesting.
So I'm really excited to share everything with you guys today.
I want to start off with asking what is a disease.
So in your opinion, what what would you define
it is a disease.
And I know
that a lot of us will
think of some really common examples like
measles, chickenpox, HIV AIDS, influenza,
maybe Alzheimer's and I think this really varies a lot depending on
our own experience and
opinions on disease,
whether this be experienced with ourselves or our family members and
just
what we've seen and been through
as individuals. And
so next I want to talk about
the
dictionary dot com definition of disease and they define
disease as a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ part
structure or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic
or developmental errors, infection poisons,
nutritional deficiency or imbalance,
toxicity or unfavorable environmental factors, illness, sickness ailment.
And the reason I put this slide in here is because I wanted you guys to compare
this definition with
the definition that you immediately thought of when I
asked what is the disease because I think that
on a personal level, we all have different ideas of
what constitutes a disease. What
the
I guess what the underlying definition is for each individual
varies a lot.
So I think it will be interesting to just kind of
look at how your definition might have been different or the same
or maybe you your definition included some parts
of this definition or maybe it didn't.
And the reason that I'm bringing this up is
because I think that a lot of us don't typically
classified
initially obesity as a disease. And
I think it has to do a lot with
the idea that we
we think of it as
an individualized sort of decision and the result of
what individuals eat
so that they decide
to base their diet on and
obesity
is defined as an excessive amount of body fat.
Um This body fat is measured by using a calculation called the body mass index.
And
um
so a higher body mass index indicates a higher
amount of body fat. So
obesity
usually is diagnosed by using this body mass
index calculation. And
so once you have a higher body mass index
than you're at a much higher risk for obtaining
other diseases, especially other metabolic diseases such as high cholesterol,
um heart problems, diabetes
and
just
a number of different
issues.
Um
like I mentioned before, I think that a lot of us that go
the sole cause of obesity as being
the result of
poured a poor diet and
that the poor diet is
a direct result of the decisions as an individual makes
and I'm making this presentation because I think
we should really change our mindset on that.
Um,
in this
in this presentation. I've laid out a few community based causes
as well as some economic and
some evolutionary and some genetic causes.
There are some political and
also some factors that deal with discrimination that can also really
influence the levels of obesity that we're seeing within communities.
And this slide just kind of sums up what I
want the main points of this presentation to be.
And essentially that's just
I want to get across the point that
we cannot just analyze one factor as being
sufficient for
defining the entire prevalence of obesity. Like we have to have,
we have to understand that there are multiple
factors that are all intertwined and they're all working
towards influencing the levels of obesity that we're seeing.
So the first um
the first main point that I want to
talk about are these sociopolitical and economic contributions
and
neighborhood safety is
1.
1 idea that really falls underneath this um
point. And
it's essentially
the idea that people who view there
neighborhood as unsafe on average have higher body mass index.
And then individuals who view their neighborhood as safe.
And I think this
this is a direct result of
essentially just having less outside time, less exercise,
especially among Children getting their physical activity.
Um
furthermore, I think that what really
influences that neighborhood safety as well as socioeconomic status.
So there are studies along with the neighborhood safety studies that show
families and households that live in
lower socioeconomic statuses
have higher
higher rates of obesity among
their communities. And
this
I believe is a direct result of what the U. S. D. A. The the U. S.
Department of Agriculture defines as a food desert.
And this is an area that has less access to healthy foods.
They have less access to outlets like grocery stores that have available for
and affordable
healthy nutritional foods that families can
used in
aiding and giving themselves a well balanced diet.
And the other,
the other point that's on this slide is
the fact that
ethnicity and race in these communities does play a factor.
So there are studies that show
that
community is
that have more people of color
tend to have less access to healthy foods.
And in general this just shows how discrimination does in fact play a role
in
obesity levels.
Um
And just malnutrition in general,
whether that's over nutrition or under nutrition
a lot of times these communities will be
under the preferred level of vitamins and minerals wealth over
the preferred amount of cholesterol, sugars, saturated fats and
just calories
in general. So the second point
that I would like to make this presentation is
evolutionary contributions.
And I found this one to be really interesting because I don't think a lot of us really
think about this in terms of obesity
and
it's based on the fact that our society has changed. So we've gone from being
a society that had to scavenge and hunt and gather for our food
and then go through periods where we had
no food.
So it was beneficial for individuals to be able to have
the ability to store their fat because they've survived periods of
starvation. Whereas now our society we have
such easy access to
calorie dense
and such energy dense foods that we are still storing as that
when we really don't need the storage for survival.
And
so essentially our brains are still wired to store
this fat to aide in our survival when in reality
we
don't need that fast storage and it's becoming
more of a burden than
a benefit for humans.
Um Lastly,
I want to talk about the genetic contributions and this was
really fascinating to me because I've never I've never thought about this
idea before and that's a decrease in natural selection.
There's a really interesting study that talks about
the fact that
fitness is sort of becoming irrelevant. So
we have such great technologies now that we are able to allow
people with these harmful genetic mutations
to survive through the reproductive years.
And that's creating
these,
it's creating
sort of a pile up of these harmful mutations
because they are getting passed down through future generations.
And the study found that a lot of the mutations
do have
um
yeah,
ties and links into metabolic diseases. So
there are a lot of
these genes that are not being filtered out through
natural selection.
And I found that to be
really, really interesting because I did not know that that way
a factor.
So overall,
um
I just
my main point was that I think that there are a majority of
contributing factors into obesity prevalence and
the decisions of individuals and their diets is not
as big a factor as we initially believed.
Thank you.