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Hi, this is GIRE!
I wanted to share something that's been a hot topic in medical school lately. One of the most basic things we talk about in healthcare is obesity. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in 'eating disorders' beyond obesity, and if this phenomenon is not well managed, it is likely to develop into a more serious disease in the future, so it is a very active research topic in family medicine, geriatrics, pediatrics, etc. Both eating disorders and obesity are diseases that need to be taken seriously because they affect people of all ages, races, sizes, gender identities, and backgrounds.

[What is an eating disorder?]

Eating disorders are serious health conditions that affect both physical and mental health. They include problems with thoughts and behaviors about food, eating, weight, and body shape. 

These symptoms can affect your health, emotions, and ability to function in important areas of your life. If not treated effectively, eating disorders can become a long-term problem and in some cases can lead to death. The most common eating disorders are anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Statistics show that 9% of the US population, or 28.8 million Americans, will develop an eating disorder in their lifetime. Each year, 10,200 people die as a direct result of an eating disorder - that's one death every 52 minutes. 28-74% of eating disorder risk is due to genetic factors.

[What is obesity?]

Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat that poses a health risk. A body mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher is overweight and 30 or higher is obese. The problem has grown to epidemic proportions, with the global burden of disease accounting for more than 4 million deaths per year in 2017 due to being overweight or obese.

Obesity is one aspect of the double burden of malnutrition, and today, obesity is more prevalent than underweight in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Once considered a problem only in high-income countries, overweight and obesity are now increasing dramatically in low- and middle-income countries, especially in urban settings. The majority of overweight or obese children live in developing countries, where the rate of increase is more than 30% higher than in industrialized countries.

[Health Sciences Research: Prof. Tylor Mason]

As such, it is imperative that citizens become more aware of their health, and that preventative measures and treatments are advanced. 

Therefore, GIRE has partnered with Proffesor Tylor Mason from the University of Southern California to provide students with the opportunity to combine disciplines such as psychology, medicine, and public health to solve problems and conduct research to develop new drugs in order to create healthy communities. 

Prof. Tylor's current research interests include.

1) We will examine how biobehavioral measures of self-control relate to adolescents' actual eating and dietary intake behaviors, and how inhibitory control moderates the association between contextual factors and eating and dietary intake behaviors.

2) To characterize different eating behaviors in everyday life and to determine the diagnostic and theoretical overlap between food addiction and binge eating disorder.

3) This study will examine the transdiagnostic sample of women. trait-based neurocognitive factors and temporal contextual factors in a transdiagnostic sample of women. binge eating in a transdiagnostic sample of women.

With GIRE, high school students receive direct support from consultants and conduct unprecedented research in research areas they are curious about, acquiring specialized knowledge, discovering new facts, and considering ways to utilize the research results.