Clinical Nature

“Worldwide, more than 1.3 billion people are overweight, whereas only 800 million are underweight – and these statistics are diverging rapidly.” – Barry M Popkin

For most developing nations, obesity has emerged as a more serious health threat than hunger. Although under-nutrition and famine remain significant problems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, even desperately poor countries such as Nigeria and Uganda are wrestling with the dilemma of obesity.

Globalisation over the past 20 years has contributed to the increased consumption of sweetened beverages, vegetable oils and animal-source foods by poor people in developing countries, as they also adopt sedentary Western lifestyles. This combination of lifestyle and dietary changes is paving way for a global public health catastrophe.
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Dr Richard Jackson, Chair of the School of Health at UCLA, has done extensive work in the impact of the environment on health, particularly relating to children. He is an advocate of the need to address deep-rooted structural issues with our built environment that are creating epidemics of chronic illnesses. According to Jackson, “we are now medicalising the problems people are experiencing with their environment. We are no longer creating wellbeing.” (more…)

Did you know that traditional Chinese medicine is one of the oldest medical systems in the world, and the first to study endocrinology as early as 200 BC? Resistance to insulin, a hormone that regulates our blood sugar levels, is the reason why people with diabetes see endocrinologists who specialise in hormone related disorders.

Over 85% of people diagnosed with diabetes have type 2 diabetes, which is a preventable lifestyle disease strongly associated with weight gain and obesity. Chinese medicine upholds that a healthy diet which prevents disease is better than the best medicine, so it makes sense to understand the good and bad fats in our diet.
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