Heidegger: filosofía y la esencia de la poesía

2.3.1

The setting: Aotearoa New Zealand

New Zealand (officially known as Aotearoa New Zealand) is a South Pacific island nation of 4.8 million people (51.3% female) (Statistics New Zealand, 2014b; Statistics New Zealand, 2017). Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, are thought to have arrived in Aotearoa from East Polynesia some 800 years ago (Wilson, 2005), whilst arrival of the first European settlers occurred as recently as the early 19th _{century (Phillips, 2005a). Since the arrival of these early}

immigrants, immigration has played an important role in population growth in New Zealand, with periods of high immigration at different times from Britain, the Pacific Islands and Asia (Phillips, 2005b). As a result, the New Zealand population consists of people from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds (Table 2.4). People of European decent make up the vast majority of the population (63%), while Māori are the second most populous group (13%). Strong immigration from the Pacific Islands occurred during the 1950s and 60s and then again in the 1980s (Phillips, 2005b). Coupled with high fertility rates among Pacific women (2.7 live births per woman (Statistics New Zealand, 2013)), the population of New Zealanders of Pacific Island origin increased from a mere 3600 in 1951 to 295,944 (6%) in 2013 (Phillips, 2005b; Statistics New Zealand, 2014b). A recent major influx of Asian immigrants saw this group increase by 25% between 2006 and 2013 to stand at 10% of the total population (Statistics New Zealand, 2014b). Almost one third of the New Zealand population resides in the country’s largest city, Auckland. This city has a unique demographic, being home to the largest populations of both Māori (9%) and Pacific (13%) people in any single city worldwide (Statistics New Zealand, 2014a).

22 Table 2.4. Ethnic makeup of the New Zealand population, results from the 2013 Census

Ethnicity Number % of total populationa

European 2,969,391 63.4

Māori 598,602 12.8

Pacific 295,944 6.3

Asian 471,708 10.1

Middle Eastern, Latin American, African 46,953 1.0

Other 67,752 1.4

Total people (stating at least one ethnicity)b _4,011,399

Not elsewhere included c _{230,649 4.9}

Total people 4,242,048 100.0

Adapted from Statistics New Zealand 2013 Census (Statistics New Zealand, 2014b). a _{Column does not}

total 100% as some individuals identify with more than one ethnicity, so are included multiple times;

b _{Total number of people who stated at least one ethnicity;} c _{No ethnicity stated.}

Note: Includes all people who stated being of each ethnic group, whether as their only ethnic group or as one of several. Where a person reported more than one ethnic group, they have been counted in each applicable group.

2.3.2

Women versus men

Men and women have numerous biological and physiological differences. Throughout reproductive life, women maintain a greater percentage of body fat than men, yet accumulation of adipose tissue typically differs between genders (Wiklund et al., 2008). Whereas women predominantly accumulate fat in the gynoid region (i.e. around the hips and thighs), abdominal (android) fat accumulation is more common, and dangerous, in men (Wiklund et al., 2008). Furthermore, there is evidence that the specific location of adipose storage sites differentially affects insulin sensitivity and serum lipids in men and women (Masharani et al., 2009). Total and central adiposity was associated with lower insulin sensitivity and increased cardiovascular disease risk in men but not in women (Wiklund et al., 2008; Masharani et al., 2009). In contrast, fat mass (total and central) predicted less favourable lipid profiles in women, but not in men (Masharani et al., 2009).

Aside from the obvious physical differences between men and women, some of the more subtle physiological and endocrine differences can lead to sex disparities in metabolic and other health risk factors (Huxley, 2007; Peters et al., 2014; Appelman et al., 2015). For females, disorders associated with pregnancy (e.g. gestational diabetes) and female endocrine disorders (e.g. polycystic ovary syndrome) are associated with higher incidence of cardiovascular disease (Appelman et al., 2015). Mortality from cardiovascular disease though, and from coronary heart disease and stroke specifically, is substantially higher in men than women (Mozaffarian et al., 2015). However, cardiovascular disease risk factors (e.g. migraine,

23 smoking, type 2 diabetes) are more potent for at-risk women than they are for men of equal risk profile (Huxley et al., 2006; Peters et al., 2014; Appelman et al., 2015). For example, women with type 2 diabetes are at significantly greater risk of cardiovascular disease (46% for coronary heart disease (Huxley et al., 2006) and 27% for stroke (Peters et al., 2014)) than similarly diagnosed men (Huxley et al., 2006; Peters et al.). Conversely, without diabetes, incidents of stroke are similar between men and women, while coronary heart disease is higher (7.6%) in men than women (5.0%) (Mozaffarian et al., 2015).

Even substrate metabolism has been shown to have sex specific differences (Varlamov et al., 2015). Rather than oxidise circulating free-fatty acids, women tend to store them (especially subcutaneously), whereas the opposite seems to occur in men (Varlamov et al., 2015). During exercise however, lipid oxidation is higher, and carbohydrate oxidation and muscle glycogen depletion lower, among women than men (Tarnopolsky, 2008), suggesting that exercise might be a more effective weight (especially fat) loss strategy for women. Interestingly though, when men were administered oestrogen, fat and carbohydrate oxidation during exercise reflected that seen in women, suggesting that at least some of the sex-differences in substrate utilisation might be due to the effect of female oestrogens (Tarnopolsky, 2008).

Gender differences also exist with regards to physical activity; men are typically more physically active and less physically inactive than women (Hallal et al., 2012; Ng and Popkin, 2012; World Health Organization, 2015a). Despite this disparity, there has been an historic paucity of female-specific physical activity research. In fact, the seminal physical activity studies such as the Harvard alumni study (Paffenbarger et al., 1978) and London Transport workers study (Morris et al., 1953) were conducted exclusively in men; a trend that continued for many years. Nevertheless, the described sex discrepancies in disease risk, body composition and substrate utilisation demonstrate that direct translation of research findings between the sexes is not always valid (Franconi et al., 2015; Maas and Leiner, 2016). In fact, a call was made for sex-specific investigations in both humans and animals, even in pre-clinical and cell trials (Clayton and Collins, 2014). Bearing in mind that all aforementioned factors for sex and gender disparity are closely related, investigating these relationships in a sex-specific manner is of great importance in the advancement of health-related research.

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2.3.3

Age

Countless physical changes occur throughout the lifespan. Physical activity is known to decline throughout adolescence and into adulthood (Jasik and Lustig, 2008), and continues throughout middle and older age (Yang et al., 2017). In a longitudinal study of children followed from birth, MVPA among girls fell steadily from 47 min/day at age nine years to 18 min/day at age 15 years (Nader et al., 2008); this decrease in physical activity was associated with a 26% increase in BMI over the same period and was strongest at the upper end of the BMI distribution (Mitchell et al., 2013). Reduced physical activity and increased body weight with aging are also reported among women across the lifespan (Yang et al., 2017). Fat mass is known to increase progressively from maturity to menopause, with an even greater increase in fat mass (especially abdominally) (Franklin et al., 2009) and a concomitant reduction in lean mass occurring with sarcopenia following menopause and into older age (St-Onge, 2005). The period following physical maturation until prior to menopause (52.5 years) (or perimenopause, 47.5 years) likely provides a relatively stable biological and physiological platform in healthy, normally menstruating women (Gold et al., 2013) on which to assess the effects of physical activity on body composition and metabolic risk factors.

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