Economic Considerations of Obesity

Approximately 80% of GP consultations and 60% of hospital bed days are related to chronic illness and their complications, many of which are caused by, or exacerbated by, overweight and obesity. Bariatric surgery, considered the last management option for the morbidly obese, is estimated to cost approximately €30,200 per gastric bypass procedure and €20-€22,000 for gastric banding.

No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means ~ Maimonides.

Keep scrollin' scrollin' scrollin' scrollin'

How many hundreds of miles do you think you've scrolled in your lifetime?

The problem with social media is that there's no 'stopping-cues'. In comparison say to a book (where you might come to the end of a chapter and decide whether you want to continue or not), or watching a tv program (where it ultimately ends or you finish a box-set or series), but with social media you can avail of endless scrolling through timelines that don't offer a similar stopping-cue. The box-set binges pale in comparison to the timeline binge.

On Twitter, new content is being produced quicker than you can ever read what’s already being posted.

You'll never catch up with it all.

The Screw You Effect

A form of experimental sabotage where the research participant does not want to conform to the experiments' demands. When a participant is in an experiment you may not get accurate results because they are aware of the experiment and in turn go out of their way to do everything wrong or go against everything you ask them to, in essence, they may deliberately try to ruin the experiment (the "screw you effect"; Masling 1966).

In Psychology, demand characteristics refers to when a person changes his/her behaviour because he/she is in an unfamiliar situation, carrying out artificial tasks and tries to make sense of this by 'working out' what the researcher wants. After 'working out' what the researcher wants, he/she will either try to 'please' the researcher by doing what he/she thinks the researcher wants them to do (known as the please you effect) or go against what the researcher wants by doing the opposite of what he/she thinks the researcher wants them to do (known as the 'screw you' effect).

For example, the children in Bandura's (1966) study of TV violence and aggression may have punched and kicked 'bobo dolls' because they thought that the study was a 'game' and that this was what Bandura wanted them to do (please you effect), rather than because they'd previously watched an adult punching and kicking the dolls on a video, as Bandura argued (i.e. it wasn't the video that caused the aggression but the expectations of Bandura).

Delighted to get this published

Why?...Why Not?...Why Not Me?...Why Not Now!?!?

It’s a shame for a person

to grow old without ever

seeing what their body

was capable of.