Causes of Human Disease: Nutrition and Environment (FutureLearn)

Offered by University of Leeds,
Causes of Human Disease: Nutrition and Environment (FutureLearn)

Explore how nutrition and environmental factors, including lifestyle, influence your chance of developing human disease. On this course you’ll look at the importance of nutrition in human health and explore what happens to the body when it doesn’t receive the right nutrients.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see FutureLearn's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

You will focus on malnutrition and obesity and how these contribute to the development of diseases, such as diabetes. You’ll learn how food can lead to ill health by carrying pathogens that cause food poisoning. Using research from the University of Leeds, you’ll explore how toxins are linked with diseases such as cancer. You’ll then investigate environmental factors, including air pollution, and its contribution to human diseases.

Syllabus

Week 1: Food and nutrition
Week 2: Environmental exposures

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

  • Explore how poor nutrition and diet contributes to malnutrition and disease.
  • Report on the nutritional and protective qualities of specific diets.
  • Investigate toxins present in food and how they contribute to human disease.
  • Describe how waterborne chemical toxins can have an adverse effect on health.
  • Reflect on how air pollution can contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Who is the course for?
The course is suitable for anyone with a general interest in the science behind causes of human disease and medicine. No previous knowledge or experience is required. If you are working in nursing, healthcare or social care or just wish to learn more about it, this course is designed to support you as a professional. By completing all aspects of the course you will have achieved 14 hours of CPD time.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Protecting Health Data in the Modern Age: Getting to Grips with the GDPR (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Groningen

Protecting Health Data in the Modern Age: Getting to Grips with the GDPR (FutureLearn)

Learn how the GDPR helps to protect health data and get familiar with rights, obligations, risks and safeguards. Join this course to understand how health data is protected. People use technologies to track their fitness and health. Medical and health professionals use technologies to treat patients. These technologies generate a lot of health data. With technological developments in the health sector come questions of privacy.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Environmental Challenges: Scarcity and Conflict in the Natural Environment (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Environmental Challenges: Scarcity and Conflict in the Natural Environment (FutureLearn)

War and conflict can severely disrupt the governance of the environment. What is the impact on both people and the environment? This course explores three aspects of conflict and resource scarcity, and applies these to explore decision making and negotiation skills. Human conflict has both short and long term effects on the natural world.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Causes of Human Disease: Understanding Cardiovascular Disease (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Causes of Human Disease: Understanding Cardiovascular Disease (FutureLearn)

Explore normal cardiovascular function and risk factors associated with heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading global cause of death. On this course, you’ll learn how the cardiovascular system functions and understand common cardiovascular diseases like heart attack and stroke, as well as the risk factors associated with them.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Biochemistry: the Molecules of Life (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of East Anglia

Biochemistry: the Molecules of Life (FutureLearn)

Explore the impact of biochemistry on bioenergy and health, discovering why graduates are in demand; with the Biochemical Society. Biochemistry brings together all of the sciences to study the chemical and physical processes that occur in living organisms. It truly is the science of life. As a scientific discipline in its own right, biochemistry has a major impact on all areas of the life sciences and biochemists are in high demand among employers.

Self Paced
3 Weeks
Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research (FutureLearn)

On this free online course, find out how medical treatments are discovered, tested and evaluated to improve healthcare for all. Everything we do in healthcare has to be discovered and thoroughly tested before it can be put into practice. In this course you will explore clinical research – its challenges and its huge benefits to modern healthcare.

Self Paced
4 Weeks
Environmental Challenges: Rights and Values in Ecosystem Services (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Environmental Challenges: Rights and Values in Ecosystem Services (FutureLearn)

Differences in values can create conflict. How can we learn to manage our natural resources with integrity? Humans are very innovative, but we’ve also created many ecological problems. We’ve changed the face of the planet, fished the oceans, and we’re causing climate change through emissions. Designing institutional arrangements that recognise ecosystem services in the values we place upon natural systems will be an important way to help governing the planet, for both present and future generations.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Improving Health Assessments for People with an Intellectual Disability (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
Trinity College Dublin,EIT Health

Improving Health Assessments for People with an Intellectual Disability (FutureLearn)

Learn how to improve healthcare for people with intellectual disabilities with this course for healthcare professionals. Detecting poor health and supporting people with an intellectual disability in managing their health can be challenging for healthcare professionals. During this course, you will gain valuable knowledge that you can transfer into your daily practice on how to include people with an intellectual disability in health assessments.

Self Paced
3 Weeks
Understanding Insulin (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Southampton

Understanding Insulin (FutureLearn)

Learn more about all things insulin: from how it works, to insulin types, to side effects and guidance on how to prescribe safely. The current spend on diabetes care by the NHS is estimated to be £1.6 million pounds per hour. 80% of this is spent on managing diabetes complications, the risk of which can be significantly reduced through effective blood glucose control using insulin.

Self Paced
4 Weeks
Causes of Human Disease: Understanding Causes of Disease (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Causes of Human Disease: Understanding Causes of Disease (FutureLearn)

Learn the epidemiological methods used to understand the causes of diseases and how social factors influence their development. What causes human disease? Why do some people get a disease but others don’t? Through this course, you’ll learn how epidemiologists are helping to find answers to these complex questions and how the health of a population is measured and analysed.

Self Paced
2 Weeks
Causes of Human Disease: Transmitting and Fighting Infection (FutureLearn) FutureLearn
University of Leeds

Causes of Human Disease: Transmitting and Fighting Infection (FutureLearn)

Learn how pathogens cause infectious diseases, how these diseases are transmitted and how our immune system respond to infection. Most of us have experienced common diseases like flu or less common ones like pneumonia. On this course, you’ll learn how pathogens cause infectious diseases and how these diseases are transmitted. You’ll examine the bacterial resistance to antibiotics, how this leads to serious infections like MRSA and reflect on approaches to address this problem.

Self Paced
2 Weeks