I will use nearly any excuse not to diet, and the topic of this blog post is no exception. Studies have shown that dieting constrains one’s ability to recover from illness, and how ingesting an appropriate amount of caloric intake is necessary in the recovery process.
A study conducted on mice in 2008 concluded that the mice who were designated to consume a lesser amount of calories while being exposed to the flu had an increased chance of not only contracting the illness, but also require an increased amount of time to recover from the flu as well. Although conducted on mice instead of humans, this study has a valid point, demonstrating how limiting one’s intake can affect not only one’s weight, but their overall health and well-being. This study could have been improved by being completed with humans rather than rats, but intentionally exposing humans to the flu could be considered unethical.
Consuming an adequate amount of calories and fluids are necessary in the recovery process, and for maintaining a good sense of overall health even when one is not necessarily ‘sick.’ Managing to stay healthy and ‘in shape’ can be achieved through a healthy, balanced-not restricted- diet, and is recommended to all. I don’t know about anyone else, but doing soseems like a win-win solution for me!
“Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever.” – Most Common Myths About the Common Cold. Health, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Great blog. I personally love food so dieting is out of the question for me. I enjoy how you got a little bit of a scientific aspect in this by adding the study done on the mice. I can also agree where I would like to see the study done on humans. A good experiment design could be one where , a scientist takes flu patients and splits them up into two groups. One group will diet and the other will consume an adequate amount of calories. Over time they should track the subjects progress to see who heels faster. That would then give us a better idea as to if your hypothesis is true. As Andrew tells us in class following the scientific method is very important when we come up with theories and ideas. Andrew also always tells the class that a lot of results can be due to chance therefore I raise a question about the rat study. I would first like to say that I wish that there were more information on the experiment itself. Was it male or female mice? How long did they have the flu for? Questions like that will commonly pop up in the science realm for science is all about trying to refute facts and go against what one person is saying. Overall this was a great blog.. Here is a link that goes against what I say about trying to figure out what gender of mice to us in an experiment. This web link suggest that using both male and female mice in an experiment is bad. take a look, this would make a great class talk
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/testing-males-and-females-in-every-medical-experiment-is-a-bad-idea/
Body image is a huge part of todays society, especially for us college students not wanting to gain the freshmen 15. I completely agree with you that dieting is not the best way to go about losing weight. Not only does it affect your immune system, but it affects all other aspects of the body as well. Cutting out carbs and fats deprive your body from nutrients that it needs to stay healthy, hence the increase of becoming sick. Also, if you don’t eat before a workout, you are not properly fueling your body and prepping it for what it’s about to endure. A study conducted at Georgia State University found that if you don’t eat enough calories, you burn less calories and your metabolism slows down. Needless to say, dieting does more harm then good. The best way to stay fit is to maintain a healthy diet and get physical exercise!
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/27/when-dieting-and-exercise-hurt/
I always considered dieting but never actually followed through with it. I heard it is not good to diet because once you stop dieting, you usually just gain all the weight back anyway. You mention, “Studies have shown that dieting constrains one’s ability to recover from illness.” How so? Why is it that people who diet have trouble fighting illnesses and why is it that they are more prone to illness? You made a good point by using the mice experiment, but one may argue that this does not have the same effect on humans. Curious to learn more on your topic, I came across this article. It further discusses the reasons it is crucial to eat healthy and get the required amount of calories in daily. You really only discuss the flu in your blog, but I found in the article that not getting the right amount of nutrients can lead to other things such as, “weakness and fatigue, a swollen tongue, difficulty walking and numbness or tingling in the extremities. You may feel weak and tired and get headaches, as well as feel short of breath and lightheaded. ” These can lead to illnesses on a larger scale like the flu.
I don’t think this is accurate only because what type of diet do you mean? Sometimes people do not diet, it is just their lifestyle, therefore you cannot say that one should not diet. It should be different types of diets that you are talking about. Also, how many calories should one consume? What if their own lifestyle prevents them from getting as much calories as another? You should have more sources to prove that dieting is not a good thing to do.
I completely agree with your opinions on dieting. I like how you included the study on rats conducted in 2008 to show that when rats consumed little calories, their bodies and immune systems were more susceptible to getting the flu, as well as recovering from such illnesses. I agree that using humans would be a better experiment with better results, but people would probably find this unethical. I think if scientists conducted experiments on other animals or a larger sample of rats, maybe the results would find stronger correlations between consuming fewer calories and catching an illness (such as the flu). However, the rats catching the flu can be due to chance because like Andrew said in class, every experiment has a possibility of chance coming into play, unless it is a “perfect experiment”. Below is a link that just discusses other reason why dieting is bad for your health. Some of these reasons including muscle loss and an unhealthy attitude towards anything. Take a look!
http://www.boxingscene.com/weight-loss/1552.php