Showing posts with label children who are obese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children who are obese. Show all posts

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Contagious Habits: How Obesity Spreads | Wired Science | Wired.com

A few years ago, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler made a striking discovery about obesity: it spreads from person to person, much like a contagious virus. They were able to demonstrate this by mining the data sets of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), a longitudinal survey that has revealed many of the risk factors underlying cardiovascular disease. Because the FHS noted each participant’s close friends, colleagues, and family members, Christakis and Fowler were able to recreate the social network of the town, to see how everyone was connected to everyone else.

And this is when they made their remarkable discovery about weight gain. According to the data, if one person became obese, the likelihood that his friend would follow suit increased by 57 percent. (This means that the network is far more predictive of obesity than the presence of genes associated with the condition.) If a sibling became obese, the chance that another sibling would become obese increased by 40%, while an obese spouse increased the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37%.

The Christakis/Fowler work is an important reminder that Donne was right: No man is an island/entire of itself. Instead, we are all plugged into a vast network of social contacts and cultural norms. While we think ourselves as autonomous individuals, that autonomy is severely constrained by those around us.

But this longitudinal data – it’s a bird’s eye view of human life – still begs the question: How do other people influence us? Why does an obese friend make us so much more likely to gain weight? Why do the habits of others influence our own habits?

Click on the "via" link for the rest of the article.

******************************************************
For Health Information you can use, Follow, Connect, Like us on (Most Invites Accepted):
http://www.nursefriendly.com/social/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Posterous.com
http://nursefriendly.posterous.com

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
http://www.nursinghumor.com
http://www.nursefriendly.com
http://www.nursingcasestudy.com
http://www.nursingentrepreneurs.com
http://www.nursingexperts.com

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Tubby Americans throwing off safety of city buses - USATODAY.com

The Federal Transit Authority (FTA) proposes raising the assumed average weight per bus passenger from 150 pounds to 175 pounds, which could mean that across the country, fewer people will be allowed on a city transit bus.

The transit authority, which regulates how much weight a bus can carry, also proposes adding an additional quarter of a square foot of floor space per passenger. The changes are being sought "to acknowledge the expanding girth of the average passenger," the agency says.

"This change is really just a bow to reality," says Joseph Schwieterman, who studies bus ridership as director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University in Chicago. "With no small number of bus passengers tipping the scale at 200 pounds or more, this is much more realistic."

Click on the "via" link for the rest of the article.

See also http://www.nursefriendly.com/obesity/

******************************************************
For Health Information you can use, Follow, Connect, Like us on (Most Invites Accepted):
http://www.nursefriendly.com/social/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Posterous.com
http://nursefriendly.posterous.com

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
http://www.nursinghumor.com
http://www.nursefriendly.com
http://www.nursingcasestudy.com
http://www.nursingentrepreneurs.com
http://www.nursingexperts.com

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Fighting Childhood Obesity in Minority Communities | MinorityNurse.com

The eight-year-old girl in Dr. Sheila Davis’ qualitative study on childhood obesity weighed 205 pounds.

The little girl and 16 other children and their parents were meeting with Davis and her research team. Why, Davis asked her, do you want to lose weight? “Because I don’t want the earth to move,” the girl replied. “When I jump rope, the children say it feels like an earthquake.”

The obesity epidemic currently sweeping the United States is a particularly poignant problem for the nation’s children. A full 30% of all kids age six to 19 are overweight, and their numbers have doubled in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Among minority populations in this country, the numbers are even more alarming. Statistics from the CDC show that more than 33% of Hispanic/Latino boys are overweight, as are 35.7% of African-American boys and 51.2% of Mexican-American boys. As for female children, 30.1% of Hispanic/Latino girls, 46.4% of African-American girls and 36.7% of Mexican-American girls are overweight.

Click on the "via" link for the rest of the article.

******************************************************
For Health Information you can use, Follow, Connect, Like us on (Most Invites Accepted):
http://www.nursefriendly.com/social/

Twitter!
http://www.nursefriendly.com/twitter

Facebook:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/facebook

What's New:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/new/

Blogger:
http://4nursing.blogspot.com/

Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nursefriendly

Nursing Entrepreneurs, Nurses In Business
http://nursingentrepreneurs.ning.com/

Posterous.com
http://nursefriendly.posterous.com

StumbleUpon,
http://www.nursefriendly.com/stumbleupon
******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
http://www.nursinghumor.com
http://www.nursefriendly.com
http://www.nursingcasestudy.com
http://www.nursingentrepreneurs.com
http://www.nursingexperts.com