• Preventive Nutrition and Food Science
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.394-407
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• 2011

Better understanding of the complex factors leading to human diseases will be necessary for both long term prevention and for managing short and long-term health problems. The underlying causes, leading to a global health crisis in both acute and chronic diseases, include finite global health care resources for sustained healthy human survival, the population explosion, increased environmental pollution, decreased clean air, water, food distribution, diminishing opportunities for human self-esteem, increased median life span, and the interconnection of infectious and chronic diseases. The transition of our pre-human nutritional requirements for survival to our current culturally-shaped diet has created a biologically-mismatched human dietary experience. While individual genetic, gender, and developmental stage factors contribute to human diseases, various environmental and culturally-determined factors are now contributing to both acute and chronic diseases. The transition from the hunter-gatherer to an agricultural-dependent human being has brought about a global crisis in human health. Initially, early humans ate seasonally-dependent and calorically-restricted foods, during the day, in a "feast or famine" manner. Today, modern humans eat diets of caloric abundance, at all times of the day, with foods of all seasons and from all parts of the world, that have been processed and which have been contaminated by all kinds of factors. No longer can one view, as distinct, infectious agent-related human acute diseases from chronic diseases. Moreover, while dietary and environmental chemicals could, in principle, cause disease pathogenesis by mutagenic and cytotoxic mechanisms, the primary cause is via "epigenetic", or altered gene expression, modifications in the three types of cells (e.g., adult stem; progenitor and terminally-differentiated cells of each organ) during all stages of human development. Even more significantly, alteration in the quantity of adult stem cells during early development by epigenetic chemicals could either increase or decrease the risk to various stem cell-based diseases, such as cancer, later in life. A new concept, the Barker hypothesis, has emerged that indicates pre-natal maternal dietary exposures can now affect diseases later in life. Examples from the studies of the atomic bomb survivors should illustrate this insight.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.273-278
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• 2011

This study was performed to compare the status of oral care knowledge, oral care practice, and the patterns of the oral health care utilization before and during the pregnancy. It was conducted on the basis of a survey of 291 pregnant women who were in 9 post-natal care centers for post-natal care after delivery located in Daegu Metropolitan city and Changwon city of Gyeongsangnam-do from April 1st till April 29th on 2010. Forty five percent of them were experienced with the gum bleeding before pregnancy and 55.7% were experienced during pregnancy. The number of average tooth brushing per day was 3.05 times before pregnancy and 2.99 times during pregnancy in the survey. The patients who were experienced in dental health care during pregnancy out of the subjects for study were 51 for 17.5%. The score for the dental health knowledge was 7.82 for 10 grade scale and 5.38 before pregnancy and 5.14 during pregnancy for 10 grade scale in the actual performance scoring for dental care. Pre-dental care, experience in activity restriction due to dental disease, concern about oral health and regular visit to dental clinic were significant associated with use of dental care services during pregnancy.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.5-16
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• 1992

The maternal and child health is a basis of national health, and indicates the level of social welfare and health of the country, because it is related with community welfare status, general cultural conditions, and medical and health sciences. This is a study carried out to identify the present practices of maternal and child health care programs implemented by the private clinics located in Guns(counties ; rural area) in Kyungsangnam Province and to propose alternatives to improve their current programs through a self-administrative questionnaire. The subjects were 90 private physicians who operated their own clinics since 1990 and were general practitioners, Obstertrician/Gynecologists or pediatricians: This survey was conducted by mail from 15 January to 25 February 1992. The response rate was 94.4 percent. 1) The major manpower for MCH programs of the studied clinics was physicians and nurseaids. 70.3% of physicians were general practitioners, 81.1% of nursing manpower were nurseaids. 31.1% of the studied clinics employed lab-technicians. 89.2% of them had MCH room whatever the size and the setting, and 84.4% of Ob/Gyn clinics installed laboratory equipments. 2) 55.4% and 63.5% of the studied clinics provided 151 or above consulting services and curative services of MCH per physician a month respectively and 33.8% and 25.7% of them provided 10 or less consulting services and curative services per physician a month. 91.9% of lab-technicians had 10 or less laboratory tests per technician a month. 3) There was a difference between Ob/Gyn and pediatric clinics in terms of services delivered : for example, 80% of Ob/Gyn clinics provided pre- and post- natal care services, while 84.6% of pediatric clinics provided vaccinations for children. It was also found that only a few of general practitioners involved pre-and post- natal care services. 4) There were no clinics which had opened regular health education session but 24.3% of them had opened the sessions irregularly. Ob/Gyn clinics put emphasis on maternity and pediatric clinics did on child health, but general practitioners touched with both maternal and child health. 21.6% of the studied clinics had some kind of educational materials for MCH programs. Most of the materials were pamphlets or small booklets. 5) Proteinuria/glucosuria, blood pressure and blood type were tested in 48.6~69% of the studied clinics ; tests for blood sugar and hepatitis B were provided in 39.2~41.9% of them, most of them were done in Ob/Gyn clinics. 6) 41.9% of physicians, 29.7% of nurses and 45.9% of nurses-aids wanted to receive on-job-training for MCH programs.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.17-32
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• 2006

This essay has attempted to document the actual behavior patterns and the social networks related to the child delivery in the pre-industrial Korean society. We interviewed 30 women who had given birth to their first child during the 1930s and the 1940s in order to accumulate data related to son-prayer rites, prenatal care and food avoidance, sacred-string culture, and other incantation rituals. The characteristics of the social relationships with the person who had assisted the delivery and the recovery were also analyzed in terms of kinship networks. The results are as follows. First, there was a big gap between knowledge and the actual practices in birth rituals and customs. We assume that this is due to the adverse social-economic conditions at that time which may have restricted the actual performances of these customs. Second, there were almost no differences of the performance of these' birth customs between the urban areas and the rural areas. Third, the people who assisted the delivery were women who were mostly from the husband's family. Help from the wife's family were quite exceptional. Finally, it has been found out that only about half of the women who were interviewed performed the well-known custom of three-week after-birth confinement.

• The Journal of Korean Medical History
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.87-96
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• 2015

In this study, we investigated advertisements in Dong-a newspaper about gynecological drugs between 1920 and 1945 and analyzed the awareness of women's health and disease during the Japanese Colonial Rule. The advertisements included leukorrhea, oligomenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, feeling of cold, sterility, hysteria, and sexually transmitted infection and identified inattentive menstruation, improper intercourse, poor pre- and post-natal care as the cause for illness. This study includes the following limitations; it only analysed advertisements from Dong-a newspaper, and most of the drugs were manufactured in Japan and might not accurately reflect the health and disease of Korean women. Suggested future studies may include analysis of institute magazine and Japanese news advertisements during this period.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 1990

1. Background Women's health and their involvement in health care are essential to health for everyone. If they are ignorant, malnourished or over-worked, the health &-their families as well as their own health will suffer. Women's health depends on broad considerations beyond medicine. Among other things, it depends upon their work in farming. their subordination to their families, their accepted roles, and poor hygiene with poorly equipped housing and environmental sanitation. 2. Objectives and Contents a. The health status of rural women : physical and mental complaints, experience of pesticides intoxication, Farmer's syndrome, experiences of reproductive health problems. b. participation in and attitudes towards housework and farming c. accessibility of medical care d. status of maternal health : fertility, family planning practice. induced abortion, and maternal care 3. Research method A nationwide field survey, based on stratified random sampling, was conducted during July, 1986. Revised Cornell Medical index(68 out of 195 items). Kawagai's Farmers Syndrome Scale, and self-developed structured questionnaires were used to rural farming wives(n=2.028). aged between 26-55. 4. Characteristics of the respondents mean age : 40.2 marital status : 90.8% married mean no. of household : 4.9 average years of education : 4.7 yrs. average income of household : \235,000 average years of residence in rural area : 36.4 yrs average Working hours(household and farming) : 11 hrs. 23 min 5. Health Status of rural women a. The average number of physical and mental symptoms were 12.4, 4.7, and the rate of complaints were 22.1%, 38.8% each. revealing complaints of mental symptomes higher than physical ones. b. 65.4% of rural women complained of more than 4 symptoms out of 9, indicating farmer's syndrome. 11.9 % experienced pesticide overdue syndrome c. 57.6% of respondents experienced women-specific health problems. d. Age and education of respondents were the variables which affect on the level of their health 6. Utilization of medical services a. The number of symptoms and complaints of respondents were dependent on the distance to where the health-care service is given b. Drug store was the most commonly utilized due to low price and the distance to reach. while nurse practitioners were well utilized when there were nurse practitioner's office in their villages. c. Rural women were internalized their subordination to husbands and children, revealing they are positive(93%) in health-care demand for-them but negative(30%) for themselves d. 33.0% of respondents were habitual drug users, 4.5% were smokers and 32.3% were alcohol drinkers. and 86.3% experienced induced-abortion. But most of them(77.6%) knew that those had negative effects on health. 7. Maternal Health Care a. Practice rate of contraception was 48.1% : female users were 90.9% in permanent and 89.6% in temporary contraception b. Induced abortions were taken mostly at hospital(86.3%), while health centers(4.7%), midwiferies(4.3%). and others(4.5%) including drug stores were listed a few. The repeated numbers of induced abortion seemed affected on the increasing numbers of symptoms and complaints. c. The first pre-natal check-up during first trimester was 41.8%, safe delivery rate was 15.6%, post-natal check-up during two months after delivery. Rural women had no enough rest after delivery revealing average days of rest from home work and farming 8.3 and 17.2. d. 86.6% practised breast feeding, showing younger and more educated mothers depending on artificial milk 8. Recommendations a. To lessen the multiple role over burden housing and sanitary conditions should be improved, and are needed farming machiner es for women and training on the use of them b. Health education should begin at primary school including health behavior and living environment. c. Women should be encouraged to become policy-makers as well as administrators in the field of women specific health affairs. d. Women's health indicators should be developed and women's health surveillance system too.