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Discuss what happens to an individual of a normal weight when they adopt a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.
Introduction
In general terms, an individual’s weight is a balance between the amount of calories consumed and absorbed in their diet and the amount of calories burned up in the processes of respiration and exercise. If more calories are consumed than utilised, then the balance will get stored in the body, primarily as fat. (French et al. 2001)
This is, of course, a great oversimplification of an enormously complex process but it is the guiding principle behind the thrust of this essay.
Considerations relating to diet and health have taken up many volumes in many textbooks and we therefore do not presume to cover the whole area in one essay, but we hope to focus in on some of the main principles the same considerations apply to exercise and health.
What evidence is there to link exercise (or the lack of it) with a state of health? The paper by Miller et al. (1997) is a good starting point. It provides a meta-analysis of over 50 studies which point to a lowering of the risk of cardiovascular disease in active individuals and 43 more studies which show an approximate doubling of cardiovascular risk in inactive subjects.
A poor diet and a sedentary life style has been statistically implicated in what Lees and Booth (2004) call “Sedentary death syndrome” . This reflects the correlation between poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle and a reduction in health generally.
The converse is also demonstrable. Exercise has been shown to reduce the statistical incidence of specific disease processes (AHA 1996). A particularly elegant and well constructed twin study (Kujala et al. 1998) demonstrated the relationship between physical activity rates and premature death. It can also be demonstrated that regular exercise and obesity control can reduce the risk of developing Type II diabetes mellitus to almost nil. (AHA 1999). Other studies can point to the reduction of cancer rates in associated with exercise (Hakim et al 1998)
What evidence is there to link a poor diet to physiological and health changes? One of the major dietary factors that is related to ill health is the issue of cholesterol. (Han et al. 1998) This is also a massive topic, but in broad terms a high fat diet tends to be reflected in a high cholesterol level, which, in turn, is positively correlated with an increase in cardiovascular disease incidence (AHA 2004). This is mediated by a change in the balance in the LDL and HDL fractions of lipoprotein transport mechanisms in the blood.
James (et al. 1997) point to many dietary factors that impinge on health. Reduction in anti-oxidant intake (Duthie et al.2003) is associated with a reduction in the DNA repair capacity of the body. A reduction in vitamin intake can result in a multitude of different health issues (Chandra 2002) (El-Kadiki et al.2005)
We can point to a number of physiological changes in the body which occur as a result of both a sedentary life style and dietary change. Obesity, as an independent variable, will produce changes that result in appetite reduction, (Dulloo et al. 1997) and increased fat oxidation (Leibel et al 1995). Increased weight will result in increased energy expenditure (Blundell et al 2001). It can also be demonstrated that obesity is associated with insulin resistance, increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system and increases in leptin concentrations (Swinburn et al. 2002)
In broad terms our eponymous subject would be very poorly advised to adopt the changes that he has in terms of long term health, he would be very much better advised to keep his weight down and his exercise levels up.
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