Origins Of Health Essay

LCP attempts to understand also how linked lives, chronological age, transitions and social change shape people’s lives from prenatal period to death (Elder, 2003). From the lens of the LCP, health is not the result of risks that occur sporadically at one point in time; 1 on the contrary, it is a lifelong process (Gee et al, 2012). LCP point outs that the origins of health can be found very early in the life course: in the prenatal period.
There are two main arguments to explain the life course origins of health (Hamil-Luker &O´Rand, 2007, Geronimus, 2013): First, the argument that the origins of adult disease can be found in fetal exposures where different factors make a biological imprint of the human organism in a way that makes it more vulnerable to illness in the adulthood. This explanation is supported by Barker in his theory of fetal origins (Barker, 2003). On the other hand, the argument that cumulative exposures, related to socioeconomic,
This disproportionate fetal growth is associated an increased risk of coronary heart disease in the adulthood. This theory is based on experiments using primates and rodents; these experiments found that early environmental exposures alter physiological regulator systems in permanent ways (Hamil-Luker &O´Rand, 2007). This theory is supported in human experiments too. These experiments showed that small size at birth and disproportion in head size, length and weight are markers of lack of nutrients or oxygen at particular stages of gestation. The death rate from coronary heart disease fell progressively between those who weighed less than 5.5 lbs. (2500 g) at birth and those who were 9.5 lb. (4310 g). Similar results were found for insulin resistance, serum cholesterol and blood pressure (Barker,