Gene-Environment Interaction Essay

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Gene-environment interaction and its effect on obesity disease
Unlike what is usually portrayed on media, obesity is not just a problem of unhealthy lifestyle but in fact influenced by genetic factor as well. Genetic factor is believed to attribute 40 – 70% in the development of obesity (Shawky & Sadik, 2012). In other words, environment, genotypes and the association of these two factors play roles in the phenotype expression, which, in this case, is obesity. With regards to environmental influence, obesity can be the result of many external factors such as energy imbalance caused by oversized food portions, physically inactive lifestyle, consumption of unhealthy food, smoking, emotional factor or improper sleep time (Marti et al., 2013).
Obesity is labeled as a disease by American Medical Association in 2013.According to World Health Organization,people are considered obese if their body mass index in greater than 30kg body weight per meter square of body height. With over 1 billion people now overweight or obese, the World Health Organization has proclaimed this to be a global epidemic (Haslam & James, 2005). Obesity can cause many physical and mental syndromes, diseases and disorders in various medical fields such as cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, respirology (Poirier et al., 2006). As a result, obesity has been found …show more content…

For humans, components of an obesogenic environment may include ready availability of highly palatable and energy-dense foods, lack of easy access to the opportunity for exercise (e.g. no safe parks nearby), use of motorized transportation for essential activities, social facilitation of eating, social facilitation of sedentary activities and a lack of education for making good decisions with respect to diet and exercise. (Garland et al.,

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