All over the world, when a woman becomes pregnant, they are customarily expected to act in a certain way and observe local traditions. Customary maternity practices will differ depending on what part of the world you are in, but the most visible differences come from the maternity customs practiced in the West and those that are observed in China. Here are some of the major differences.

Western Maternity Practices

Maternity practices in the west are generally based on large amounts of medical and scientific research as to what is best for mother and child. In terms of these practices, modern western traditions are approximately 200 years old having their roots in the early 1800’s when the modern medical profession began. As such western parents take a rational and logical approach to the whole issue of pregnancy, and tend to follow their doctor’s orders to the letter.

While there are no hard and fast rules pertaining to a western pregnancy it is expected that the mother should eat correctly, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and avoid tobacco and alcohol. A western pregnancy is exemplified by regularly visiting the doctor, receiving comprehensive check ups, and basically ensuring that both mother and child are in good health. Overall western maternity practices make extensive use of all the modern technology available, this included prenatal tests for genetic defects, and ensuring that the child’s development is progressing as expected.

The most common complaint that pregnant women in the west have when pregnant is “morning sickness”(also known as Nausea, Vomiting of Pregnancy or Emesis Gravidarum). Morning sickness is a phenomenon that is experienced by approximately 50 to 95% of all women during their pregnancy and is displayed with symptoms of nausea and vomiting. Although NVP can occur at any point during the day it is most common when a pregnant woman wakes up from a night of sleep, ergo the name, morning sickness.

A developing theory in regards to unborn child development in the west is that by reading aloud to the fetus, and playing classical music (Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach) will have a positive impact on the child’s neural development and essentially make the baby smarter. This has not been conclusively proven by science but is still a popular theory and many expectant mothers in the west will spend their evenings at home reading Shakespeare and Dickens aloud while listening to Mozart.

During western pregnancies it is common for the expectant mother to have a party for the unborn child. These parties are referred to as “baby showers” and typically close friends and relatives will gather to celebrate the new life and give the parents gifts that will be useful when the baby is born. Baby showers have no medical significance, but are considered an important aspect of any western pregnancy, and can be likened to a bridal shower for when a woman gets married.

In terms of the western ideals of keeping both mother and child healthy, these will typically follow the normal standards of modern healthy living. Western pregnancy traditions will not change dramatically from country to country although currently there is an ongoing debate in regards to the circumcision of male children and whether this actually causes more harm than good. Traditionally circumcision was important in times when genital hygiene was not rigorously practiced and, especially in tropical locations, infections of the foreskin were common. Nowadays there is a strong argument the circumcision is no longer medically necessary leading to a departure from this once standard tradition.

Traditional Chinese Maternity Practices.

In contrast with the very tame, unchanging, and scientifically based maternity practices in the west, Chinese traditions, especially to someone who has not experienced them before, can seem rather strange. Chinese pregnancy traditions start when a couple is first married with the husband carrying his wife over a pan of burning coals when entering their home for the first time. This is meant to ensure that when the woman does fall pregnant she will pass through her labor successfully. The roots of this tradition date back to times where there was a high chance of death while in childbirth, however, according to modern science there is no reliable basis that this practice actually increases the woman’s chance of surviving the birth.

Once pregnant an expectant mother, according to Chinese traditions, must guard her thoughts against anything negative or hurtful as it is believed that everything experienced by a mother will have an effect on the unborn child. With this in mind it is expected that a pregnant Chinese woman will read beautiful stories and poetry (not necessarily aloud), not look at contrasting colors, sit on crooked mats (this will affect the child’s balance), loose her temper (this will cause the child to have a bad outlook on life), or gossip. Sexual activities are forbidden during a Chinese pregnancy as this, it is believed, can potentially have a severe and lasting impact on the child and cause them to be social outcasts for their future lives.

Food plays a very important part in any Chinese pregnancy and there are many ancient taboos in regards to what an expectant mother may or may not eat. If foods are not prepared properly it is believed that they can cause the child to have a poor social disposition and by eating light colored foods a mother can cause her child to have a lighter complexion (in traditional Chinese social structures this is important because field workers and peasants often have a darker complexion than anyone else in society due to the fact that they spend so much of their time in the sun). Spicy foods are believed to cause heart problems, and cold foods can affect the child’s brain. Seafood, it is thought, (especially shellfish that are not properly prepared) can cause birthmarks or harelip (cleft pallet), and other cosmetic deformities. Overall the stringent conditions attached to food have their roots in a time where disease was rife and food was not properly cleaned and cooked. Essentially all taboos relating to food are a safety measure against disease.

It is traditional for Chinese women to drink a strong herbal potion during their pregnancy (usually one containing willow bark), this has been noted to have some extremely beneficial anesthetic effects and is similar in idea to the pain relieving medications given to western mothers. Traditionally women are expected not to fear the labor and birthing process as this was customarily considered “the career” or sole function, of women in Chinese society.

Overall both Chinese and Western practices, while having the potential to be drastically different and rooted in conflicting cultural ideals and social mores, have the same interests at heart; the protection of both the mother and the child and the successful completion of the birthing process. In the modern world we have the ability to understand more about the way that different cultures react to maternity and the reasons for these reactions. This gives women all over the world new options for how they approach their pregnancy and give them a higher chance of having a healthy and happy baby.

Western diseases have been dispersed across the globe since the age of exploration. When European troops alighted in the new world, they brought with them all kinds of infectious diseases that devastated the native populations of Asia and the Americas. Back then, the so-called “afflictions of affluence” that originated in the West were syphilis and influenza. Many centuries later, the conditions suffered by the rich have evolved into chronic conditions that take years to develop and will not be cured.

Changing lifestyles have made cancer and diabetes the new silent killers, which take lives in wealthy countries while impoverished nations deal with infections. The United Nations has focused on combating infectious diseases to improve life in developing countries. However, as the public health and quality of life improves in low-income countries, the chronic illnesses that once plagued only the richest countries are now becoming the most serious threat in poor countries as well.

Afflictions like diabetes, heart disease and cancer are all a product of the modern lifestyle: inactivity as a result of urbanization and a general disregard for health. Poor diets, smoking and increasing pollution also contribute. As a result, developed countries must invest funds in treatment and research in order to combat these incurable maladies.

Malaria, tuberculosis, measles and cholera are all big problems in poor countries, though can be easily controlled with inoculation and treatment. These “ailments of poverty” used to be the most ominous health concerns in poor countries, but chronic conditions have recently surpassed infections as the biggest global killer. Nevertheless, worldwide health organizations are focusing on infections as an impediment to development rather than trying to institute preventative measures for the chronic afflictions that accompany this modern world.

Perhaps the most pivotal issue in the evolution and spread of chronic conditions is that these diseases hit younger and kill more quickly in lower-income countries than in middle- or high-income countries. Currently, chronic ailments account for half of the illnesses in poor nations, which is a huge drain on the health system and labor force. Because of inferior health infrastructure and lower general well-being, chronic diseases take their toll more easily than in countries where people have a good diet and the aid of knowledgeable physicians. Africa is the only continent where more people die from infectious diseases than from chronic ones. Health officials estimate that by 2015 chronic disease will be the top killer globally.

In 2005, three quarters of the deaths from chronic afflictions occurred in poor countries. This shows that international awareness needs to shift in a different direction. Rather than focusing on infection as a threat, authorities need to start targeting prevention and treatment of chronic ailments. People are living longer, getting fatter and smoking more in poor countries, resulting in rapidly escalating numbers of patients with diabetes and cancer. The trend is reversing in rich countries, where people are taking better care of their bodies and ridding their lives of cigarettes.

So why does it remain that people are more concerned with bird flu than with hypertension? Ostensibly, it may be because infections are simpler to treat, usually with immunization or drugs, and chronic diseases require long-term management. But as the world continues to develop and lifestyles evolve, more resources must be allocated to care for these chronic diseases as they eclipse infections as a threat to world health.

Bioinformatics is a new field of science that takes an interdisciplinary approach to solving health problems. The field of bioinformatics has roots in the Human Genome Project, a massive undertaking that resulted in a wealth of data difficult for investigators to piece through. In order to extract conclusions from a large amount of biological data, scientists of bioinformatics use techniques from the following fields:

Using these various investigative avenues, researchers extract algorithms to make sense of the biological data. And from these algorithms, scientists can solve medical problems from the molecular level. Bioinformatics can examine genome sequences to determine how certain genes are manifested and learn more about evolution. The overarching goal of bioinformatics is to examine the fundamental building blocks of humans—genes, DNA and proteins—to find answers to health issues.

Bioinformatics enlists computer science and applied mathematics to approximate the structure and purpose of the proteins that determine the biological fingerprint of every living being. With the study of genes, scientists can determine what can make a person predisposed to chronic illnesses like cancer. The conclusions reached through complex and often abstract methods used in bioinformatics can be used either as the impetus for or as a complement to traditional experimentation, helping almost every field of research.

Recently, two software programs have emerged to assist health professionals with the use of bioinformatics. The first is a tool that provides guidance for the use of the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), a reference source for DNA and protein similarities. Scientists can compare their data to the BLAST system. This program includes a general overview of algorithms as well as an easy-to-understand guide to using BLAST’s various applications.

Another new tool is a computational pipeline that has been altered to identify DNA variants in sequence data. The tool aligns the data being studied with a genome (indexed from BLAST) and examines any discrepancies, which scientists can then make conclusions from.

Both of these new tools are making bioinformatics more useful, which has potentially groundbreaking implications in many realms of the health field, including disease prevention and treatment, diagnosis, drug development and insurance.

A recent study by an American team of researchers has discovered that obesity can be spread like a virus within a network of friends. Based on a pool of data containing more than 12,000 participants, investigators concluded that people were more likely to become what is considered “obese” if they had a friend who was overweight. This conclusion may explain the cause of the climbing rates of obesity across America. This phenomenon carries serious repercussions for insurance companies and health organizations in the United States. Obesity is also quickly becoming an issue for individuals, because there are so many health problems associated with being obese that overweight people are having difficulty obtaining insurance coverage.

The data analyzed in this study included 32 years of information about a community of over 12,000 people from a small town in Massachusetts. The data was originally collected as part of an examination of the causes of heart disease. Each member of a family that participated in the study also gave the name of one close friend (for contact purposes). From this data, the researchers were able to recreate an interconnected web that helped them track the spread of obesity over time.

The method used to determine the weight categories of each participant was a value-calculation method known as Body mass index (BMI). This is an objective measure of height-to-weight that gives an indication of whether an individual is underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. The BMI percentage is calculated by dividing weight (kg) by height squared (meters squared).

BMI ranges:

• Below 18.5: Underweight
• 18.5 to 25: Healthy
• 25 to 30: Overweight
• 30 to 40: Obese
• Above 40: Morbidly Obese

Using a history of the health and weight of these 12,000 individuals, the research team was able to observe that the changing BMI of a person over more than three decades was often closely related to the BMI of their close family and friends. Family members who gained weight often influenced each other, but the correlation was much stronger with friends. The principal cause was that friends often change each others’ perception of what comprises an acceptable body type. If a close friend puts on a lot of weight, it is easy for a person to accept their own weight gain, and is therefore become more likely to grow larger without realizing it.

The researchers’ initial figure about the spread of obesity is that a person’s chance of becoming obese will increase by 57% if they have a friend who becomes obese. If a close mutual friend is obese, the chance of becoming obese as well skyrockets to 171%. The investigators point to this conclusion as one of the factors for American’s growing obese population. People are catching it from one another. These findings are quite an achievement in the field of medical sociology, pairing body image with social contact and perception.

The researchers described the spread of obesity as a similar to a viral contagion in the way that it traveled through the wide social network that was part of the study. Some of the researchers involved in the study have gone so far as to describe obesity as an epidemic, since the condition can spread very rapidly. The reason that some describe this phenomenon as an epidemic is because the weight gained was often just a small amount that pushed an individual from a BMI that indicates “overweight” to one that indicates “obese.”

While many social scientists find this to be a groundbreaking study, other medical professionals don’t trust what they see as a hasty and somewhat anecdotal conclusion. Key in this assessment is the use of BMI as an indicator of health. The BMI, some say, is not a reliable indicator of health. It fails to take into account many factors, such as body type or lifestyle. For example, if a person is athletic, it is likely that their BMI will be higher because the value cannot differentiate between muscle weight and what is strictly fat. BMI is unable to distinguish between types of tissue and body structure that make up weight, and can often result in more skewed BMIs. Also, people of a short stature often have a lower BMI, even when the actual fat percentage of their physique might be higher than a larger person. A more accurate gauge of obesity, some argue, is simply measuring the waist circumference of a potentially overweight person.

BMI can be used as an indicator for health risks if the value is on either end of the BMI spectrum. Percentages below 18.5 usually indicate a serve eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Percentages above the “normal weight” range of 18.5 to 25 can usually indicate an increased threat of heart disease, particularly for older individuals. Even higher BMIs will be accompanied by other health concerns, such as hypertension and diabetes.

The condition of obesity is defined as the point past which fatty tissue in humans is increased to an unhealthy point. Obesity can arise from genetic determinants, lifestyle choice, certain illnesses, and neurobiological mechanisms. Another factor, social determinants, is becoming an increasingly popular explanation for a growing obese population worldwide. In the United States, obesity is becoming a public health concern.

Out of all developed countries worldwide, the United States has the largest obese population. This is a growing public health concern because obesity in American has been increasing steadily since the mid-1980s. Some people blame this on environmental causes, as many see a changing American economy and culture and a direct influence on the change in lifestyle that has inspired such a drastic demographic change.

Environmental factors that have likely been the cause of the growing obese population:

• Sedentary lifestyle
• Declining cost of food
• Changing workforce
• Increasing wealth
• An aging population
• The rise in popularity of fast food
• Urban sprawl.

Health risks that arise from obesity:

• Cardiovascular disease
• Type 2 diabetes
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol

In some cases, obese individuals are also afflicted gastrointestinal conditions, strain of the musculoskeletal system, stroke, asthma, and depression. These are all severe, potentially fatal conditions that may continue to afflict an individual even after they have returned to a healthy BMI. Due to the myriad of potential health risks that accompany people with weight problems, insurance companies are hesitant to take on new policyholders if they already have a BMI in an unsafe range.

In America and all over the world, a growing obese population means a strain on the global health care infrastructure that will lead to future challenges in providing care that is necessary for unhealthy BMIs. Insurance companies are trying to avoid being liable for a great number of these complications, and often reject applicants who rank too high in body mass index. Obesity is a problem for people all over the world, and a contagious one, at that.