PHY3202 · Nutrition, metabolism and body weight

Overview

The unit will build on your knowledge of body systems acquired in year 2. You will commence with an exposition of the major nutrient groups, their digestion, absorption, intracellular processing, metabolism and storage. This will lead you on to a consideration of the ways in which stored nutrients are retrieved and of nutrient and energy fluxes within the body. You will learn how the body senses food intake and nutrient/ energy stores at both the peripheral and central levels, as well as the physiological regulation of appetite and body weight. You will study common and important disorders including obesity, metabolic diseases and diabetes. You will develop understanding of the measurement of body mass and body composition, determination of food preferences, mechanisms of dysregulation of body mass, and interactions of disordered metabolism with the endocrine, cardiovascular and reproductive systems. You will finally consider the role of public information and therapeutic interventions including a consideration of alternative therapies from the perspective of evidence-based practice in the efficacy of weight loss strategies and treatment for cardiometabolic disease.

Areas of study: Physiology

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Describe the chemical, energetic and physiological attributes of the major nutrient groups and use this knowledge to explain whole body energy balance and nutrient stores;
2. Explain how peripheral and central mechanisms sense food intake and match this to body mass and energy stores;
3. Evaluate theories for the development of body mass disorders, metabolic syndrome and the associated treatments;
4. Explain the implications of obesity and the physiological consequences of weight gain on various physiological systems including metabolic, cardiovascular, reproductive and the development of cancer;
5. Critically evaluate the scientific literature and write scientific reports and essays;
6. Demonstrate scientific laboratory skills, including dissection, data analysis and graphing.

Workload

• 6 hours of directed learning (lectures, laboratory classes and workshops) and • 6 hours of self-directed study per week

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.