144 research outputs found
Waist-to-Hip Ratio and Womanâs Education Level as Predictors of Breastfeeding Duration
The possible existence of a relationship between breastfeeding duration, educational status and waist-hip ratio (WHR)
as a measure of fertility and biological fitness in a sample of the Polish population is examined in this article. Data on
age, height, weight, waist and hip circumferences, educational level (as a proxy for socio-economic status), and duration
of breast feeding were collected for women using questionnaires in 11 outpatientsâ surgeries for healthy children, and in
5 general practices in three districts of Wroclaw, Poland. An ordinal multinominal linear model with logit link was used
to determine the extent to which duration of lactation was influenced by maternal WHR and level of education. The best
single predictor for the duration of lactation was WHR. While WHR decreases according to increasing duration of lactation
for mothers with university or high school education, no such differences were observed among women at the lowest
level of education. This study confirms the greater biological fitness of women with low WHR in the Polish population,
and shows that this is mediated by level of educational attainment of the women
The 'who' and 'what' of #diabetes on Twitter
Social media are being increasingly used for health promotion, yet the
landscape of users, messages and interactions in such fora is poorly
understood. Studies of social media and diabetes have focused mostly on
patients, or public agencies addressing it, but have not looked broadly at all
the participants or the diversity of content they contribute. We study Twitter
conversations about diabetes through the systematic analysis of 2.5 million
tweets collected over 8 months and the interactions between their authors. We
address three questions: (1) what themes arise in these tweets?, (2) who are
the most influential users?, (3) which type of users contribute to which
themes? We answer these questions using a mixed-methods approach, integrating
techniques from anthropology, network science and information retrieval such as
thematic coding, temporal network analysis, and community and topic detection.
Diabetes-related tweets fall within broad thematic groups: health information,
news, social interaction, and commercial. At the same time, humorous messages
and references to popular culture appear consistently, more than any other type
of tweet. We classify authors according to their temporal 'hub' and 'authority'
scores. Whereas the hub landscape is diffuse and fluid over time, top
authorities are highly persistent across time and comprise bloggers, advocacy
groups and NGOs related to diabetes, as well as for-profit entities without
specific diabetes expertise. Top authorities fall into seven interest
communities as derived from their Twitter follower network. Our findings have
implications for public health professionals and policy makers who seek to use
social media as an engagement tool and to inform policy design.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, 7 tables. Supplemental spreadsheet available
from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/2055207616688841, Digital
Health, Vol 3, 201
Mobile Activism, Material Imaginings, and the Ethics of the Edible: Framing Political Engagement through the Buycott App
In this article, we explore the discursive constructions of Buycott, a free mobile app that provides a platform for user-generated ethical consumption campaigns. Unlike other ethical consumption apps, Buycottâs mode of knowledge production positions the app itself as neutral, with app users generating activist campaigns and providing both data and judgment. Although Buycott is not a dedicated food activism app, food features centrally in its campaigns, and the app seems to provide a mobile means of extending, and perhaps expanding, alternative food network (AFN) action across geographies and constituencies. Thus, as a case study, Buycott unveils contemporary possibilities for citizen participation and the formation of activist consumer communities, both local and trans-national, through mobile technologies. Our analysis shows, however, that despite the appâs user-generated format, the forms of activism it enables are constrained by the appâs binary construction of action as non/consumption and its guiding âmissionâ of âvoting with your walletâ. Grounded in texts concerning Buycottâs two largest campaigns (Demand GMO Labeling and Long live Palestine boycott Israel), our analysis delineates how Buycott, its campaigns, and its modes of action take shape in user, media, and app developer discourses. We find that, as discursively framed, Buycott campaigns are commodity-centric, invoking an âethics of careâ to be enacted by atomized consumers, in corporate spaces and through mainstream, barcode-bearing, retail products. In user discourses, this corporate spatiality translates into the imagined materializing of issues in products, investing commodities with the substance of an otherwise ethereal cause. This individualized, commodity-centric activism reinforces tenets of the neoliberal market, ultimately turning individual users into consumers not only of products, but also of the app itself. Thus, we suggest, the activist habitus constructed through Buycott is a neoliberal, consumer habitus
Rejuvenation of the term Sarcopenia
It is our viewpoint that the recent consensus definitions of sarcopenia are dysfunctional for clinical and experimental practice as well as in theory. In 1989, the term sarcopenia was introduced to describe the phenomenon of age-related loss of lean body mass (10). Since 2010, six consensus definitions have been presented, and in 2016, it was assigned its own ICD-10 code (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11). A comparison of the original definition with the new consensus definitions clarifies how the term sarcopenia no longer describes the phenomenon it originally addressed. Rather, the term is now caught in tautological association, which causes confusion and hinders rather than helps understanding of this condition
Pregnancy-related interventions in mothers at risk for gestational diabetes in Asian India and low and middle-income countries (PRIMORDIAL study): protocol for a randomised controlled trial.
INTRODUCTION: Lifestyle modification is the mainstay of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) prevention. However, clinical trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of diet or physical activity (PA) in low-income and middle-income settings such as Africa and India are lacking. This trial aims to evaluate the efficacy of yoghurt consumption and increased PA (daily walking) in reducing GDM incidence in high-risk pregnant women. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The study is a 2Ă2 factorial, open-labelled, multicentre randomised controlled trial to be conducted in Vellore, South India and The Gambia, West Africa. 'High-risk' pregnant women (n=1856) aged â„18 years and â€16 weeks of gestational age, with at least one risk factor for developing GDM, will be randomised to either (1) yoghurt (2) PA (3) yoghurt +PAâor (4) standard antenatal care. Participants will be followed until 32 weeks of gestation with total active intervention lasting for a minimum of 16 weeks. The primary endpoint is GDM incidence at 26-28 weeks diagnosed using International Association of the Diabetes and Pregnancy Study Groups criteria or elevated fasting glucose (â„5.1âmmol/L) at 32 weeks. Secondary endpoints include absolute values of fasting plasma glucose concentration at 32 weeks gestation, maternal blood pressure, gestational weight gain, intrapartum and neonatal outcomes. Analysis will be both by intention to treat and per-protocol. Continuous outcome measurements will be analysed using multiple linear regression and binary variables by logistic regression. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study is approved by Oxford Tropical Research Ethics Committee (44-18), ethics committees of the Christian Medical College, Vellore (IRB 11367) and MRCG Scientific Coordinating Committee (SCC 1645) and The Gambia Government/MRCG joint ethics committee (L2020.E15). Findings of the study will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presented in conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN18467720
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