Pros And Cons Of Reductionist And Complex Systems Approach To Obesity

If bacterial diseases characterized most of the 20th century, today’s health problems are mainly due to the diseases of ease. Obesity is one example of a disease of ease. The National Institutes of Health defines obesity as having a very high amount of body fat in relation to lean body mass, or Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher. In this paper, a reductionist and complex system science approach to obesity will be addressed, as well as the pros and cons of each view. Reductionism science states that simple physical laws can explain all phenomena. This methodological approach believes that complex systems are simply derived from their elemental properties of the components and the best way to study them is to isolate variables to find a direct cause and affect relationship. Thus from a reductionist point of view, obesity would be best explained and treated by isolating the system components and finding a causal relationships between diet and disease. …show more content…
A study done in 2015 by Shimoda et al., studied the effect of purple tea, a variety of green tea, to treat fat accumulation in mice. By administrating (200mg/kg) doses of the purple tea, they found that purple tea significantly suppressed weight gain and fat absorption. The experiment was extended to humans and found that the tea improved obesity parameters (BMI, body weight, and body fat mass) in humans who consumed it daily for 4-weeks. Their conclusion was that this type of purple tea extract could control diet-induced weight gain by suppression of fat absorption and enhancement of fat metabolism. This cause and effect relationship of the purple tea to weight loss directly illustrates