Week 5

The Similarities (Article 1 And Article 2)

Current Issues : Healthy
For article 1 : Obesity
For article 2 : Smoking
The differences (Article 1 And Article 2)
Main Idea
For article 1
Overweight and obesity among Malaysians needs urgent attention.
Media should play an important role in this issue.
Exercise should be a way of life.
Recreational activities and sport in the evening.

For article 2
Reason why humans stick to bad habits.
Avoidable behaviors like cigarette use, poor diet and lack of exercise were the
underlying cause of half of the deaths in the United States in the year 2000
We have found that people aren't changing their behaviors.
Many of the participants ranked lifestyle behaviors, such as smoking, drinking
and sun tanning, as more dangerous than ozone depletion and chemical
pollution.
Stress moved past cigarette smoking as the most dangerous habit.
Typically the likelihood of contracting a disease or dying from a substance or
activity is reported numerically as a percentage or ratio.
Social and physical environments also play large roles in fueling poor habits.

Supporting Details
For article 1
Public ignorance on the problem.
Proactive in educating the public on healthy eating and living.
Our daily routines can serve as good exercise regimes especially the
walking that we do every day.
Fields for recreational activities are out of bounds for the public or taken over
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for development.

For article 2
Innate human defiance.
Deaths cause by tobacco, alcohol consumption, inactivity and bad eating.
They haven't gotten the information that these are big risks.
The scientists asked groups of indigenous Canadians why they ranked
behaviors dangerous or not.
Most of us wear our stress as a badge of honor these days.
People who are better at processing numbers look at the same information
differently than people not as number-minded, who tend to rely more on fear
than actual hard evidence.
If you perceive that all of your friends are staying up all night, baking in the
sun every day at the beach or taking multiple smoke breaks during work, this
will affect whether you also take part in the activities.
Couch potatoes might be glued to the TV by external factors more than a
lack of desire to be healthy.






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Article 1:
The recent statement by the Health Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai that overweight
and obesity among Malaysians needs urgent attention again illustrates public
ignorance on the problem.
The Minister pointed out that the prevalence of adult obesity in Malaysia from
1996-2006 had more than tripled with four out of every 10 Malaysians above 18
years of age are now being either overweight or obese.
Anyone who has a Body Mass Index (BMI) (weight divided by height squared)
between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight and between 30.0-34.9 is considered
obese.
Even more worrying is the fact that this group is at high risk of contracting
serious disorders like diabetes, hypertension and high blood cholesterol.
Other than asking people to exercise more and cut down on food, there
should also be a change in the mindset?
THE MEDIAS ROLE
According to M.Manivannan, a sportsman and the national kabbadi coach, the
people should constantly be reminded that overweight and obesity has serious
repercussions to ones health in the long term.
This is where the media especially the television should be more proactive in
educating the public on healthy eating and living, and not just remind the public
repeatedly that taking good care of your health is important.
The media should better educate the public on the consumption of healthy
food and a healthy lifestyle rather than just airing advertisements, said Manivannan
who is the Sukma 2008 national technical delegate for kabbadi.
This slowly can help change the peoples lifestyle for the better.
Educationist Selamat Ahmad Kamal told Bernama that media could inform the
public on the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for the body. Through this,
Selamat said the public could gauge for themselves their daily requirement of sugar,
fat and carbohydrates.
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But I am afraid the media will make it too technical and the public will not
understand. I hope the media can work with the Health Ministry to come up with
short statements on how many spoons of sugar a normal body needs daily.
As we are aware, the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey in 2003 revealed that
only about 40 percent of adults consumed green vegetables on a daily basis and the
television can play a good role here by encouraging the public to eat more of these
stuff and tell us the benefits of doing so during the prime time news break when most
of us will be having dinner, he added.
Of course they must tell us how much sugar is in the `teh tarik and how
many glasses of `teh tarik we can consume in a day without fearing the reaction
from the teh tarik sellers, said the former Headmaster of a school in Mentakab,
Pahang.
Selamat also told Bernama that the public had to be told that over indulgence
in fast food and carbonated drinks too can be disastrous to health.
I congratulate the former health minister Datuk Seri Chua Soi Lek for being
bold enough to advice the government to stop certain advertisements deemed
detrimental to the publics health if consumed too much.
EXERCISE A WAY OF LIFE
Overweight and obesity have increased but how about the physical activities to burn
the extra calories?
Heavy machinery foreman Oh Ce Mai believes that exercise should be a way
of life.
As many of us will give all sorts of excuse to avoid exerting our body, our daily
routines can serve as good exercise regimes especially the walking that we do every
day.
To encourage people to walk more, he suggested that the local councils
should provide safe and comfortable pedestrian lanes.
I would like to see more lanes created for walking in towns especially near
commercial centres, bus stops and schools. At present there is little or no provision
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for such lanes covered with tree canopy to encourage people to walk to or from the
bus stop, offices and the schools.
Today we see many school children being obese or overweight as they do
not walk much because their parents feel it is too dangerous for their children to walk
on the roads, said Oh, who maintains a healthy body.
Meanwhile, retired army personnel Taharin Abdul Shukor said how are we to
encourage people to exercise when fields for recreational activities are out of bounds
for the public or taken over for development.
There are cases where the fields have been fenced up or reserved for elite
groups and this saddens me.
A good example will be a field in my hometown in Temerloh, Pahang. Today
a mini stadium is on the field and the public has no free access, lamented Taharin.
Taharin urged the Youth and Sports Ministry and the local council to look into
the matter and to open up all fields like the Temerloh Mini Stadium to the public.
At the end of the day, it is all in the mindset. All we need to do is treat our
daily physical activities as exercise regime and keep up with healthy eating habits.



(Taken from http://warkah.com/overweight-obesity-malaysians/)








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ARTICLE 2
BAD HABITS: WHY WE CAN'T STOP
BY: JEANNA BRYNER
It might seem a total wonder that a smoker won't quit after hearing that puffing away
is a leading cause of death, or that an obese person can't shed a few pounds after
learning that lethal ailments loom for the overweight.
But scientists have come up with a host of and they are zeroing in on what to do
about it.

Among the reasons:
Innate human defiance.
Need for social acceptance.
Inability to truly understand the nature of risk.
Individualistic view of the world and the ability to rationalize unhealthy habits.
Genetic predisposition to addiction.

Killing Ourselves
A study by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
found that avoidable behaviors like cigarette use, poor diet and lack of exercise were
the underlying cause of half of the deaths in the United States in the year 2000.

Deaths cause by:
Tobacco: 435,000
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Inactivity and bad eating: 400,000
Alcohol consumption: 85,000
SOURCE: March 10, 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
You'd think people were on a one-track mission to self-destruct rather than desiring
immortality.

"We have found that people aren't changing their behaviors," said Cindy Jardine of
the University of Alberta. "But it's not because they haven't gotten the information
that these are big risks." She added, "We tend to sort of live for now and into the
limited futurenot the long term."

Killer knowledge
In a recent study, a group led by Jardine surveyed 1,200 people in Alberta, Canada
in 1994 and again in 2005 about what they perceived to be risky behaviors. Many of
the participants ranked lifestyle behaviors, such as smoking, drinking and sun
tanning, as more dangerous than ozone depletion and chemical pollution.

In a related study that wrapped up this year, the scientists asked groups of
indigenous Canadians why they ranked behaviors dangerous or not.

For instance, when asked about drinking and driving, most participants mentioned
that you could hurt yourself or somebody else. If people know cigarettes can kill
them or drinking and driving could be lethal, logic suggests they might quit it. Yet
even with this knowledge, Jardine said, people continue to undertake these lifestyle
risks.

Everybody's doing it
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Jardine suggests several reasons for the contrary findings. For one, when a behavior
is socially accepted or even considered desirable people tend to reconcile the fact
that it's bad for them with the idea that "everybody's doing it," she said.

"I know this is bad for me but in social circles this makes me more accepted,"
Jardine said of the common reasoning. "It ends up being something people
rationalize one way or another. And it's often easier to rationalize it in favor of trying
to fit into your social group."

One way of making it okay to smoke like a chimney or eat like a pig is with individual
experiences that support your action. For instance, you could say, "It hasn't hurt me
yet," or, "My grandmother smoked all her life and lived to be 90."

In 2004, Jardine found that stress moved past cigarette smoking as the most
dangerous habit.

"Most of us wear our stress as a badge of honor these days," Jardine said. So rather
than thinking about stress as causing physical damage to your body and perhaps
hurting family relationships, "people often boast of their stress as a success."

Risky interpretations
Typically the likelihood of contracting a disease or dying from a substance or activity
is reported numerically as a percentage or ratio [see The Odds of Dying].

Ellen Peters of the University of Oregon has found that people who are better at
processing numbers look at the same information differently than people not as
number-minded, who tend to rely more on fear than actual hard evidence. Being
afraid of cancer could drive their decisions on whether or not to smoke or the
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importance of treatment for particular cancers. It comes down to emotions, which
Peters suggests act as guiding lights in choices.

That's one reason she thinks the "truth" campaign by the American Legacy
Foundation and other anti-cigarette campaigns have been so effective. The truth ads
show gruesome images such as a bleeding brain or inflamed heart with text stating
cigarettes as the cause. One video ad shows a human-size rat walking up from a
subway station and then collapsing on the sidewalk with a sign about how cigarettes
contain rat poison.
A study by the American Legacy Foundation showed that 22 percent of the overall
decline in youth smoking from 2000 to 2002 was attributable to their "truth" campaign.

No bad behavior vaccine
Social and physical environments also play large roles in fueling poor habits.
For example, if you perceive that all of your friends are staying up all night, baking in
the sun every day at the beach or taking multiple smoke breaks during work, this will
affect whether you also take part in the activities.

Couch potatoes might be glued to the TV by external factors more than a lack of
desire to be healthy.

"We tell people they need to become physically active, but in certain neighborhoods
if you get out and go for a walk you could be putting yourself in harms way from
either traffic that's not well controlled or other kinds of things like violence in your
neighborhood," said Andrea Gielen of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School
of Public Health.

Coming up with successful pro-health campaigns requires more research and
multiple strategies, experts say. "There's no single strategy or single bullet. We're not
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going to be able to find a vaccine for healthy behavior," Gielen said. "We have to be
more creative. We have to have different kinds of partners and work with many
different folks."
http://www.livescience.com/1191-bad-habits-stop.html