Childhood Obesity
The modern world gives us a wide range of opportunities. Each opportunity has a close connection to the policy market. Thus, we have to incarnate different roles to fulfill the task. Usually, the fulfillment of the tasks is accompanied by the stress. In the 21st century, people keep talking about it using different types of media. As a result, society is transformed and eager to receive new amusing things. Fromm said that “the problem of man's existence, then, is unique in the whole of nature: he has fallen out of nature, as it were, and is still in it; he is partly divine, partly animal; partly infinite, partly finite.” His work The Sane Society demonstrates the contradictions in people existence. The position to have is predominating over the position to be. Erich Fromm described the difference between these two structures in his book To Be or to Have. The idea that people are consuming without thinking leads to conclusion that it is caused by the stress. Fromm makes a conclusion that “new is beautiful!” Today, people try to appropriate each thing they have in their life. The position mine, according to Fromm is the way of human destruction. If we do not have something, we are looking for the option to get this no matter what price we will pay for it. As usually, when the attempts of getting something desired are crashed, stress becomes a part of the life. Then people try to fill the emptiness with everything possible.
The article Link between everyday stress and obesity strengthened with study using an animal model gives the understanding in which way the stress influences the obesity.Stress can be classified as a nonspecific response of the body. The reaction depends on the condition, peculiarities of the individual behavior, surrounding environment, and physical state (the state of the sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamus). Nervous system and hypothalamus are signaling to the body to make metabolic and physiological responses. According to the recent surveys, people are using obesity as a way to keep up with the everyday stress. As a result, it causes the metabolic changes. In this process, sympathetic nervous system responses with a rise in blood pressure, increases the heart rate, and shift the bloodstream to the muscles.
Stress is often confused with the vulnerability. Though, it is impossible to conduct all necessary experiments for understanding the nature of addiction. No one in the world will allow making experiments on the human. As it is known, the stress has chemical nature. In this process, a compound corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) is involved. It controls the amount of the cortisol which is released by kidneys. Centering in the brain all these hormones are causing stress. Hypothalamus signals to the pituitary what to do via CRF. After this, pituitary responds via adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) to the adrenal gland. Under the condition that everything is working right, the level of the cortisol is regulated by the brain and the whole body is working as a system. Otherwise, human is under stress.
Stress can cause obesity. The effects of the stress on the meal patterns and food intake of animals (comparing to the everyday stress, as equivalent, on human) was examined by Departments of Psychiatry and Biomedical Engineering at the University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine. The received results made clearer the fact that metabolism is also influencing long-term changes in the obesity. The study was conducted by Susan J. Melhorn, Eric G. Krause, Karen A. Scott, Marie Mooney, Jeffrey D. Johnson, Stephen C. Woods, and Randall R. Sakai at the University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH. Their study was published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.
In the United States of America, about 17 % of children are suffering from the obesity. The amount of children with obesity compared to the previous years has increased. According to the data, the increase is observed among boys aged from 6 to 19.
According to the previous studies the number of meals, its duration, and size affects metabolism. As a result of the studies of animals the gain of fat mass is promoted by fewer and larger meals. Moreover, the level of triglycerides increases. The amount of lipids and cholesterol does not depend on total intake of calories and vice versa. Thought, how this all happens, stays unclear. Nevertheless, another important factor is that children are provoked via cartoons to eat junk food.
The University Of Cincinnati College Of Medicine conducted the experiment. They divided rats and formed colonies. In each colony, there were four males and two females. Few days after the start of the experiment, the rats formed a hierarchy: one leader and three subordinate males. During the experiment, each rat received the calculation on everyday basis meal. The created conditions for the colonies were the same: both received the equal hours of light. The observations showed that rats rejected to have their meal until the hierarchy became stable. Only after this, the rats on the top of the hierarchy received more meal, while those, who were on the bottom of the hierarchy, ate les.
The main idea of the article was to show that despite different areas of the science, these two meaningful phrases have the tight connection. From historical perspective of view, as soon as media received the power to advertize everything in their own way, the rates of sales have grown rapidly. Even in the 50th, when scientists understood the power of the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and the influence of the subliminal stimuli mainly used in the advertisement of the Coca-Cola, the usage of the technique was prohibited.
There are other factors influencing the amount of obese people in the world. As it was mentioned before, stress may have chemical nature; though, there are no grounds to assume that obesity is developing because of the same reason. There is an assumption that obesity has correlation with socioeconomic status and ethnicity. So the most obese children are among African-American and Mexican-American. If to look deeper into their everyday meal, mostly there is junk food and coca-cola or something similar, which consists mainly of the sugar.
Nevertheless, the modern society is structured. This structure is observed in everything. If the child is grown enough, it goes to school and begins to absorb the rules, created by the society to control the behavior. At school the main task is to teach the kid to do nothing. Despite the idea of the powerful man, it is better when the child is sitting quietly and responding only when it is asked to do so. It does not matter if the child is gifted or not, the most important thing in this situation is that its parents have a social status. So the way of life is or will be definite by the status.
As Fromm said, modern society is a consumer of goods. Tawney (2008) in his work The Acquisitive Society mentioned about the understanding industrial society’s influence on the human being the following:
Our judgments are extremely biased because we live in a society that rests on private property, profit, and power as the pillars of its existence. To acquire, to own, and to make a profit are the sacred and unalienable rights of the individual in the industrial society. The suspicion that this is the real reason of the obesity has grounds to exist.
Children are growing up with the desire to have. And parents give them what they want, except one thing, attention. Maybe this is the reason why the number of obese children is increasing. It is easier to put doughnut in the child mouth when it starts to ask questions on which parents cannot answer or even have no desire to answer. In the world when everything is changing with finger click people are not used to the changes. Every stressful situation causes the reaction. The easiest and less harmful way is to eat and to nothing waiting for the miracle. Only one thing comes to the mind: people became lazy. Despite the understanding that we are living in the age of discoveries and unbelievable potential of the human mind, we still are worshiping things, but not people.
All things mentioned before have mainly physiological background. Another important thing is that both stress and obesity are harmful for the human. The combination of them can cause cardiovascular diseases, immune dysfunction, and wide range of other metabolic disorders.
Conclusion
The basis of research conclusions about the connection between everyday stress and obesity show that the nature of the stress and the nature of the obesity differs from case to case. The results of the researches on the rats showed that society is structured. The structure can be formed as soon as the leader of the group is chosen. After that point, all members of the group are following the strict hierarchy with its own rules. In the case with the rats, the rule equivalent was the meal. The leader received everything when others were enjoying the remains. From the perspective of the human being, the influence, which can be caused by stress and obesity, causes health problems: cardiovascular diseases, immune dysfunction, and wide range of other metabolic disorders.
