A lesson on obesity and the causes of obesity!

What is obesity?

Obesity is the condition of being grossly fat or overweight

What causes obesity? 

The following habits have been identified and proven to be major causes of the sickly, health threatening condition of obesity.

Watching TV:

TV watching for prolonged hours is a strong predictor for obesity. Recent research has proved that people who watch around two hours of TV a day are much more likely to be overweight than those who watched only half an hour each day. When you watch TV you are virtually motionless thus your heart rate, blood pressure and metabolic rate decline, resulting in burning 20 to 30 calories less every hour. Research by Harvard University has showed that there is a link between the amount children eat and the amount of television they watch.

Eating Too Fast: This is habit of many people living in fast paced societies. Eating fast lets you eat too much before you are fully aware of it. The human brain takes about 15-20 minutes to start signaling feelings of satisfaction. Scientists suppose that fast eating is a risk factor for the metabolic syndrome which is a combination of the symptoms such as high blood pressure, obesity, and insulin resistance.

Learn values of fruits to man!

Fruits

Scientifically, a fruit is a mature fertilized ovary. Fruits are formed after the fertilization of ovules. The ovules develop into seeds and the ovary into a fruit. The food we obtain from fruits is manufactured by photosynthesis in the leaves of a plant. Fruits are therefore storage organs of food.

Fruits are an important component of a healthy human diet. They naturally contain low calories, fat, sodium, and cholesterol. They keep the body healthy and have many benefits including the following:

Lowering the Risk of Illness and Disease: The many vitamins and nutrients in them reduce risk for many illnesses such as: Stroke, heart disease and other heart-related illnesses; type 2 diabetes; certain cancers, such as mouth, stomach, and colon-rectum cancer; kidney stones and Bone loss.

It is important to eat a variety of fruits, because different fruits contain different vitamins. Mangoes, papayas (pawpaw), melons and citrus fruits, like oranges and grapefruit, have high vitamin C concentration. Cantaloupe, apricots, peaches, and nectarines are sources of vitamin A.

Learn a lesson about why and how we breath!

The processes of breathing and gaseous exchange are very important in the maintenance of life. Health science emphasizes living in a clean atmosphere to have safe lives.Read on to learn how and why we breathe.

Lungs and breathing:

Cells need oxygen and they produce carbon dioxide as a waste product. The importance of breathing is to get oxygen into the body and remove the carbon dioxide.

Location of the Lungs:

The lungs are found in the thorax which is the part of your body protected by the rib cage. The lungs are two (the left and right) and are pink in color because of the dense capillary network around them. The trachea divides into two bronchi, one going to each lung.  The bronchi split progressively into smaller tubes called bronchioles. The bronchioles finally end at small bag called alveoli where the exchange of gases takes place. Just below the lungs is the diaphragm which separates the thorax from the abdomen.

SMOKING AND ITS EFFECTS TO MAN

What is smoking?

 Smoking is a practice in which a substance is burned and the smoke is tasted or inhaled. Tobacco is the most smoked substance.

The most common method of smoking today is through cigarettes. The cigarettes are industrially manufactured or hand-rolled from loose tobacco and rolling paper.

Other implements used for smoking include pipes, cigars, bidis, hookahs, vaporizers, and bongs.

It has been suggested that smoking-related diseases kill one half of all long term smokers but these diseases may also be contracted by non-smokers.

A 2007 report states that, each year, about 4.9 million people worldwide die as a result of smoking (Wikipedia)

CONSIDER YOUR SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

The living should know that life is lived once and there are no spare parts for it. So whoever wants to live longer should live responsibly. Sexual affairs have claimed and are still claiming so many lives all over the globe. Am very sure you know this but I feel you need to reconsider it. Is your sexual life style healthy? How about the reproductive health?

The World Health Organization(WHO) defines Sexual health as “a state of physical, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality. It requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.” But how many of us meet the recommendations as per the above definition? We even don’t know the how of engaging in sexual intercourse. As a result we also have very poor reproductive health. We are not respectful, we engage in forced sex, we rape.

The science about the mouth and its hygiene

The books of science put it that in the human mouth are the; tongue, salivary glands, and teeth.

The tongue is a very important organ in a way that it aids speech, tasting of food, rolling of food, and swallowing. The tongue has taste buds for sweet, bitter, sour and salty chemicals. The foremost part of the tongue tastes sweet and salty chemicals. Sweet chemicals are also tasted at the end of the tongue toward the throat. Salt is also tasted from the sides of the tongue.

Taste buds for bitter chemicals are located mainly at the inner end of the tongue. There is normally a tendency of vomiting very bitter substance when they get to this region as we try to swallow. Sour chemical substances are tasted from the sides (left and right) of the tongue. Because of the tongue it is easy to sort bad from good foods.

The salivary glands release a fluid called saliva. Saliva is sticky, colorless, and very useful. Saliva has the following functions: softening food as we chew; sticking/binding small food particles together to form a bolus for swallowing; lubricating the mouth cavity; and contains the enzyme called salivary amylase (ptyalin) which chemically digests starch into maltose. Amylase starts the chemical digestion of starch.

The teeth are hard bony structures within the mouth. They are held firmly in the jaws by cement and gums. Their functions are; chewing, cutting, grinding, tearing and sorting food.the teeth also aid speech and prevent the jaws from falling in more so in old age. They have some little gaps in between.

HOW MUCH FOOD SHOULD YOU EAT TO BE HEALTHY?

How much food is enough for you!  For us to be healthy, we need adequate food.

Each day of our lives we depend on food. David Ssemata , a renowned writer and public speaker one day while giving a public speech about the value/ importance of doing work, informed the audience that when he was still young, his mother told him that  “my son, if you feel you should not do work, sell your stomach first and then sit to relax.”

Again, many people have said it, that we work to be able to put food on our tables. This too is true, because no man will save money if their stomachs are demanding food. Food takes a foremost priority in our lives.

But the question is how much food is enough for you? Science teaches that the amount of food we consume depends of several factors including: - Age, sex, job occupation, level of activity, health condition et cetera.

It is known that young children eat more than the adults. The reason is simple; these children are forming new cells to grow, they are very active and restless, thus they have high food demands. Feed them rightly on nutritious food so that they grow healthy.

Oxygen- the breath of life

The breath of life- people always pray for it. When breathing stops there is a reason to worry!!

Whoever is living needs a breath of life. It is necessary for us all. Oxygen is the gas we need to live. 

All living organisms have a way to obtain oxygen from the environment into their bodies. Some organisms use very simple mechanisms to breathe whereas others have complex ones.

Simple organisms such as the amoeba are single celled and the process of simple diffusion is sufficient to meet the cell’s oxygen needs.  The worms have moist skins in which oxygen dissolves and is then carried away by blood capillaries to all the cells in inner parts.

 Insects have a system called tracheal system; they take in gases through their spiracles which dissolve in the fluid within the tracheoles and then diffuse into the insect tissues. The blood of insects does not carry respiratory gases.

The fish also need oxygen; they obtain it from water which they take in through the mouth, to the gills and pass it out through the operculum. As the water passes through the gills gas exchange takes place.

The science and health care of human teeth

The mammalian teeth

Since am talking about human beings, I will call then human teeth. The teeth are bony structures located in the buccal cavity. Buccal cavity is the mouth cavity. I wish to invite you take a drive through the lesson about your teeth today!

The first teeth that form in the young children are called the milk teeth. The milk teeth are composed of the incisors and canine. They are weak teeth but are very helpful.

The milk teeth are replaced by the permanent teeth. The permanent teeth have four sets. The first are the Incisors, the second are the canines, the third are the premolars and the forth are the molars.

The incisors are chiseled shaped; because of this shape they are used for cutting/ biting food into smaller bits. Incisors occupy the front part of the mouth. The canines are pointed in shape; they are used to tear food and they are more developed in flesh eating animals. The premolars have a rough surface with cusps and ridges; grinding and chewing of food starts here. The molars also have cusps and ridges providing a large surface area for crushing/ chewing and grinding food into finer particles.

A study about the 4fs and their impact on human life

I wish to bring your attention to the early science you learnt when you went to a primary school. The teachers of science taught us about the 4fs. I wish to revisit them so that we take appropriate care to avoid diseases and sickness in our lives.

The 4fs are the:-

• ·         Fingers
• ·         Flies
• ·         Food
• ·         Feaces

Learn about the importance of trees to the well being of man

In most of the places where people are, trees also are present. Trees may be scattered singly or together in what we call a forest. Trees are very important to us and their value cannot be under estimated. I wish to share with you the great values we have in trees so that you develop a mind to conserve the existing ones and possibly plant more if you can.

Trees use sunlight energy to make food during photosynthesis. The plant uses some of this food for its respiration, growth and development and the rest is store for other organisms which cannot make their own food. 

The food that trees (plants) make is stored in:-

• ·         Seeds
• ·         Fruits
• ·         Stems
• ·         Roots
• ·         Or leaves.

On such food the animals depend for their nutrition. The food that is made comes in forms of carbohydrates (energy giving), proteins (body building), lipids (fats and oils), vitamins (for proper body functioning), and roughages.