101 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
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
Governance by campaign: the co-constitution of food issues, publics and expertise through new information and communication technologies
This paper considers food as a site of public engagement with science and technology. Specifically, we focus on how public engagement with food is envisioned and operationalised by one non-profit organisation, foodwatch. Founded in Germany in 2002, foodwatch extensively uses new information and communication technologies to inform consumers about problematic food industry practices. In this paper, we present our analysis of 50 foodwatch e-newsletters published over a period of one year (2013). We define foodwatchâs approach as âgovernance by campaignâ â an approach marked by simultaneously constituting: (a) key food governance issues, (b) affective publics that address these topics of governance through ICT-enabled media and (c) independent food and food-related expertise. We conclude our paper with a discussion of foodwatchâs mode of âgovernance by campaignâ and the democratic limits and potentials of a governance mode that is based on invited participation
Population change, social reproduction and local understandings of fertility in Melanesia
Three intersecting themes â population, fertility and reproduction â form the basis of this volume...The full text of this introduction is not available in ORA. You may be able to access the introduction via the publication website link above
Changes in subsistence practices and diet in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (PNG) became a nation state in 1975. Prior to that it had ninety-one years under colonial authority of one sort or another. It is the largest tropical island, with high rainfall and considerable geographical diversity. Coastal regions, inland swamps and highland valleys all provide ecosystems distinct from each other, and history and geography have together helped to shape dietary patterns in PNG. The agricultural ecology of PNG has evolved over the last 10,000 years or so in response to varied environmental conditions, demographic pressures and social and cultural needs. Subsistence practices changed throughout prehistory as new crops were introduced or 'traded in'. The pace of change accelerated with the onset of European colonial administration which brought with it many new crops, including cash crops. Concomitant with this was the introduction of a cash economy and the possibility of wage labour. Foods imported from other countries also became available. With independence, the range of subsistence options has not increased, but the proportion of people involved in either cash cropping or wage labour has. Dietary change is taking place at an ever greater rate, and this chapter examines this process from prehistory until 1984.</p
Impacts of modernization and transnationalism on nutritional health of Cook Islanders
© Cambridge University Press 2007. Reprinted with permission for teaching and research purposes per http://www.cambridge.org/about-us/rights-permissions/permissions/permissions-requests-our-authors/ (viewed 27 January 2014)
Seven models of population obesity
Obesity is new in human evolutionary history, having become possible at the population level with increased food security. As with any phenotype, obesity is at base an outcome of gene-environment interactions. However, different disciplines working in obesity research have identified different facets of the problem and developed different models of population obesity. These include those of thrifty genotypes, obesogenic behavior, obesogenic environments, nutrition transition, obesogenic culture, and biocultural interactions of genetics, environment, behavior, and culture. Although there is an overlap between various of these models, there remains a lack of consensus concerning obesity causation at the population level. This is a major problem in study of, and intervention in, obesity among populations
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