External Factors

People’s health is a result of internal and external factors. Describe two factors and explain their effects on people’s health.

This assignment will be looking at how a person’s health is affected by both internal and external factors. Health can be affected by several different causes and may vary for each person due to the influence and nature of these factors. However, this assignment will be looking specifically into the biological aspect discussing topics such as obesity and genetics as the internal factor and exploring the physiological elements such as beliefs and emotions as the external factor.

An example of how an internal factor such as biology affecting health is a person’s weight. Studies have shown that “height and body weight
tend to be inherited.” (The Open University, 2015) Adopted children tend to have more of a resemblance to their biological parents when it comes to their body type (The Open University, 2015). Although body weight and type would vary for each person due to several factors such as behaviour and environment, body weight is also affected by different genetic and biological factors. Genes that influence weight are still being discovered, one of them MCR4 controls the parts of the brain affected by the hormone Leptin. Leptin is produced by a gene called Ob. Low leptin levels causes the brain to think “the body is starving and increases the drive to find and consume food” (The Open University, 2015) this is due to lower levels of the hormone leptin being linked to times of famine, as opposed to higher levels which are linked to times where there is plenty. Leptin was tried on children who were obese with faulty Ob genes, with regular injections of the hormone their weight had gone down by a significant amount however during the clinical trials the leptin, injections were found to have “worked for only a small group of obese patients” (The Open University, 2015).

An attribute of an external, physiological factor that effects a person’s health is their habits.
A common habit people have is to “comfort eat”, where food is used as a comfort and then the person ends up overeating, even if a person is unhappy with their weight comfort eating is common. People have a tendency to turn to overeating, comfort eating or alcohol due to being “stressed or unhappy” (The Open University, 2015), this could signify a link between stress and emotions and how people cope with stress and the effects on the person’s health. Another factor that has an input into a person’s health is their beliefs, these beliefs and their attitudes are formed due to society and social normality as seen from “family, friends, culture, relationships, laws, TV/Media and institutions” (The Open University, 2015), what is seen as healthy to one person would depend on the influence of these social forces on the person. For example, a person who sunbathes may do so because they feel that the tan “is attractive” or it gives them confidence (The Open University, 2015), this may be due to friends and family or TV/Media who show tanned people in a positive light. However there are a lot of dangers of skin cancer linked to sunbathing that would negatively effect a person’s health, however, they either may not know about the dangers or they may choose to ignore them due to their belief that they look
better.

To conclude, there are several factors that contribute to health in the form of internal and external factors from genetics to beliefs and habits. All of these aspects have a large impact on a person’s health and can be significantly different depending on the person due to their biology or habitual behaviour.