Diseases of Affluence

LO: To describe and explain the global spread of

diseases of affluenceTo explain the consequences of these diseases

Disease of Affluence

• Disease of Affluence generally include type 2 diabetes , coronary heart disease, obesity, some forms of cancer and alcoholism. Some are interrelated, e.g. obesity is thought to be a partial cause of many other illnesses. They are mostly non communicable diseases.

Task…

• In pairs come up with a list of factors that create ‘diseases of affluence’

Factors you could have included

• increase use of the car,• less strenuous physical exercise,• easy access to large quantities of cheap food,• more high fat high sugar diets,• more processed foods, • increased leisure time, prolonged periods of inactivity,• greater use of alcohol and tobacco,• longer life span due to reduced exposure to infectious

agents and greater use of antibiotics.

What is Obesity?

• Body mass index (BMI) is a simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight and obesity in adults. It is defined as a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in meters (kg/m2).Obesity is defined as a value over 30 – a person is overweight if their BMI is over 25

What do you think is meant by a ‘disease of affluence?’

• Obesity is generally considered to be a disease of the wealthy, although ironically in the richest countries it is often young people living in the less well-off families who are more likely to be overweight, due to issues with their diet.

• There are some worrying figures relating to childhood obesity, although there has also been controversy about when someone is obese, and to what extent they are obese .This is often related to diet, and the lack of exercise which some people attribute to the growth in sedentary lifestyles and screen-based games.

• It is also cheaper to feed a child with unhealthy food than it is with healthy food, which means that obesity is a problem in many countries than one would not normally associate with it. There are also clear health risks: overweight people die far earlier than underweight people.

Watch the following video…

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDbocZ438f0

List the factors that show the problem of obesity has increased over time

Why has the problem increased?List what could be done about the problem

Global pattern of obesity

Obesity is a modern problem - statistics for it did not even exist 50 years ago.

An Obesity epidemic?• Obesity is generally considered to be a disease of the wealthy, although

ironically in the richest countries it is often young people living in the less well-off families who are more likely to be overweight, due to issues with their diet.

• There are some worrying figures relating to childhood obesity, although there has also been controversy about when someone is obese, and to what extent they are obese. This is often related to diet, and the lack of exercise which some people attribute to the growth in sedentary lifestyles and screen-based games.

• It is also cheaper to feed a child with unhealthy food than it is with healthy food, which means that obesity is a problem in many countries than one would not normally associate with it. There are also clear health risks: overweight people die far earlier than underweight people.

What has been the economic impact of obesity?

This includes• :loss of earnings; • long term sickness and inability to support oneself and family;• need to give up work and rely on benefits/pensions at individual level.

• There are clear implications for this – days lost from work and impact oncompanies/organisations;

• the need to provide health care and cost of this; • the need to fund research and development for new drugs which is

increasingly big business. May offer specific figures, drugs used insupport. All of this represents a drain on the economy, redirects fundsand therefore impacts development – the advancement in drugs is apositive aspect and provides opportunities.

Diabetes - “Sugar rush...”

Diabetes is a disease that is growing in prevalence in many countries, and over 200 million people worldwide suffer from it.Like obesity, diabetes is related to diet and lifestyle, particularly in those countries where the changing diet has caused an increase in the number of cases.Diabetes affects the body’s metabolism, and involves a problem with a hormone called insulin. It is a disease which can be partly managed by being careful over blood sugar monitoring and medication. With type 1 diabetes, a daily injection of insulin is required. The risk of developing type 2 diabetes can be dramatically reduced by keeping body weight below that of obesity, and avoiding particular types of food which are common in a more ‘western’ diet.

Global map of coronary heart disease

Explain the global distribution of diseases of affluence [6 marks]

Success criteria:• Describe some of the diseases of affluence• Give examples (with figures?) of where these

diseases are more and less common• Give reasons why there is this pattern and

explain these reasons