Nutrition education on obesity and diabetes to medical students.
Patricia Pérez-CornejoNancy E Corral-FernandezMaria Luisa Guzman-HernandezChaya GopalanPublished in: Advances in physiology education (2021)
It is important for medical students to understand the relationship between nutrition, obesity, and diabetes to educate their patients in the future. However, medical training does not always include nutritional education. An experiential learning project was incorporated into the medical school curriculum as an effort to implement nutrition in the physiology course. First-year medical students (n = 140) received lectures on the regulation of blood glucose levels and their relationship to carbohydrates with different glycemic indexes (GI), obesity, and diabetes. Lectures were followed by a laboratory exercise where students calculated their body mass index (BMI), percentage body fat, and percentage muscle using a Bioelectrical Impedance Commercial Scale. While 63% of students had normal BMI, 31% were overweight or obese and 5% were underweight. A subgroup of 54 students tested different types of breakfasts with varying GI and provided blood samples at 0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 min. Their glucose responses were plotted based on the breakfast GI. Pre- and posttests were conducted to assess the teaching intervention where the Wilcoxon signed ranks test indicated that posttest ranks were significantly higher than pretest ranks (Z = -6.6, P < 0.001), suggesting the intervention was beneficial to students.
Keyphrases
- medical students
- glycemic control
- type diabetes
- blood glucose
- weight loss
- weight gain
- body mass index
- physical activity
- insulin resistance
- high school
- metabolic syndrome
- healthcare
- bariatric surgery
- quality improvement
- randomized controlled trial
- end stage renal disease
- cardiovascular disease
- high fat diet induced
- skeletal muscle
- chronic kidney disease
- adipose tissue
- ejection fraction
- body composition
- peritoneal dialysis
- magnetic resonance imaging
- high intensity
- computed tomography
- clinical trial
- obese patients
- resistance training
- current status
- patient reported
- contrast enhanced