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Nowadays, more and more children suffer from being overweight or obese. According to the KiGGS study from Robert-Koch-Institute, approximately 15% of all examined children in Germany are overweight, almost half of which suffer from adiposity. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that worldwide, at least 41 million children up to age five are overweight or obese. The past few years have shown a tendency for even higher numbers. Half of the affected children are Asian, a quarter of them live in Africa, and most grow up in countries with low or medium income levels. A research team from the University of Auckland states that children in the USA are about five kilos heavier today than…
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The first few weeks of parenthood are filled with many changes and new challenges. The newborn’s physical developments are in a state of constant transformation. To enable accurate documentation, we use different terms for the baby in each developing phase it passes through. Up until the fourth week, a baby is referred to as a newborn. After this, the infant phase begins, which lasts until the first birthday. Hereafter, the child becomes a toddler.
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We use various different measuring units in daily life to define certain amounts, but we hardly ever stop to ask ourselves where these various units come from. Who decided how heavy one kilogram or one pound is? Most of us will be able to envision the approximate size of one kilo of flour or one pound of butter, but at some point someone must have decided how heavy exactly one unit would be and also which volume this weight would be related to.
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These days, having a slender figure is the absolute beauty ideal. The Media constantly promotes slim people, new fitness tips and fad diets, and consumers have no other choice than to acknowledge and develop a fascination for the trend. The fashion world, above all other realms, is obsessed with extremely thin bodies, with unhealthy results. A female model has to fit into size zero clothing in order to be a perfect runway model. This often contributes to many young women and girls suffering from anorexia.
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A cardiac insufficiency counts as one of the most common internal diseases and is one of the main causes of death in Western countries. The chances of this disease arising are relative to age. Only 1% of people around the age of 50 suffer from cardiac insufficiencies, while almost 10% of people over the age of 80 are affected. During a cardiac insufficiency, a malfunction in the heart leads to a reduced blood flow in the body. According to the pathomechanism, a malfunction can take on one of two forms: the systolic or the diastolic cardiac insufficiency. A systolic loss of function is the result of the heart losing its contraction power, which leads to a lowered volume per beat. This type is…
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Humans have, for centuries, tried to grasp the topics of aging and dying. Countless academics, philosophers and explorers have investigated this phenomenon in search of miracle cures against growing old. Even to this day, modern science cannot offer sufficient answers as to why we age. Aging processes are beginning to be analyzed and understood in greater depth, yet there is still no all-embracing theory that can describe the aging process and its causes in full detail. There is nonetheless a consensus that aging is a multifactorial process which is influenced by our genes, our lifestyle and our surroundings. A well-known saying states that ‘we are only as old as our arteries’, because the…
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The sun rises every single morning and sets every evening. Every year is built up of seasons. Therefore, every day, every month and every year are subject to a rhythm which is defined by the sun in relation to the earth. Our body also follows individual rhythms, among them the most incisive, the wake-sleep cycle. Body temperature, hormone distribution and the female cycle are prone to biological rhythms as well. While man had to stay alive by way of hunting and collecting food, it was essential to closely adjust the wake-sleep cycle according to night and day. Using a full day of sunlight was essential for hunting prey and it was important to seek shelter and rest in a cave as soon as the…
