3 ways community creates a healthy life | Olivia Affuso

TED Talks Daily

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2021

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maintaining a healthy weight takes more than diet and exercise, says physical activity epidemiologist Olivia Affuso. In this actionable talk, she shows how you can kickstart a healthy life by tapping into the collective power of a community that supports and motivates your health goals.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hew. Context matters, especially when it comes to maintaining our weight.
0:11.4	In today's talk from a TED salon in 2021, physical activity epidemiologist Olivia Afuso makes the case that weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight is not your personal responsibility.
0:23.3	Instead, she says, social environments, systems around us, are harming our health, and we can do things to try and fix them.
0:33.8	Making lifestyle changes to not only lose weight, but to maintain a healthy weight long term is hard.
0:42.3	Ask anyone who has ever tried.
0:45.3	So let's consider my mom, for instance.
0:48.3	She is 77 years old and has struggled to maintain her weight in order to achieve good blood sugar
0:55.9	control over the past 30 years. You see, good blood sugar control requires maintaining a
1:03.0	delicate balance between diet, exercise, and insulin injections. So early in the COVID-19 pandemic last year, my mom came to stay with me,
1:16.3	which led to a change in her usual dietary intake, away from meals provided to the elderly
1:22.2	to more helpful home-cooked meals. What could possibly go wrong?
1:30.0	Well, overnight, her blood sugar dropped dangerously low, and she was incoherent and nearly
1:36.5	unconscious.
1:38.5	Imagine having to inject your mom with a giant horse needle of gluggan to boost her blood sugar until she could take
1:46.7	in calories on her own. I was terrified that she would not be okay or that I might need to call
1:54.0	for emergency medical treatment during the pandemic. Luckily, she responded to the emergency injection and was able to consume enough
2:04.8	calories to bring her blood sugar back up. But of course, this led to a high blood sugar,
2:11.8	and she needed even more insulin, which is a fat storing hormone to get her blood sugar to a normal range.
2:20.9	Although it took a coordinated effort with her doctor to find balance between her diet,
2:27.0	exercise, and insulin regimen, I was happy to be social distancing with my mom.
2:33.2	And she was able to lose some weight, even though
2:37.1	she sometimes complained that I was acting like the food police. Nonetheless, I was grateful to have
	...

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