UNLV banner

Anthropology & Ethnic Studies

 Department Home Page
 Programs:
   Anthropology
   Graduate Programs
      Grad Students
      Grad Degrees
      Grad Student Resources
   Undergraduate Programs
 About Us:
   Contact Information
   Faculty
   Staff
 Resources:
   Archaeological Field Schools
      Summer 2007
   Anthropological Collections
   Special Programs and Facilities
   Anthropology Society
   Undergraduate Class Schedules
   Graduate Class Schedules
 Ethnic Studies:
   Afro-American Studies
 Interdisciplinary Programs:
   Asian Studies
   Latin American Studies
   Linguistic Studies
Daniel C. Benyshek, Assistant Professor
portrait photo

 

Interests: Medical anthropology, developmental origins of health and disease, diabetes/metabolic syndrome, nutrition, political ecology, applied anthropology, ethnomedicine, Native North America.

Community-based diabetes intervention programs must recognize the impact of fetal life on the risk of developing diabetes. This recognition shifts the emphasis away from the ideas that Indians are existentially flawed, with deleterious genes and bad lifeways. These notions, which have been subtly transmitted to Indian people for forty years, must contribute to the feelings of powerlessness and fatalism expressed in many Indian communities having high rates of diabetes. Instead, the latest research implicating the fetal origins of diabetes provides Indian communities with powerful new information suggesting that diabetes is not necessarily inevitable or uncontrollable for future generations.


Selected Publications

  • 2007. The developmental origins of obesity and related health disorders: prenatal and perinatal factors. Collegium Antropologicum 31/1:11-17.
  • 2006. (with James T. Watson). Exploring the thrifty genotype's food shortage assumptions: a cross-cultural comparison of ethnographic accounts of food security among foraging and agricultural societies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 131/1:120-126.
  • 2006. (with Carol S. Johnston and John F. Martin). Glucose metabolism is altered in the adequately-nourished grand-offspring (F3 generation) of rats malnourished during gestation and perinatal life. Diabetologia 49/5:1117-1119.
  • 2005. Type 2 diabetes and fetal origins: The promise of prevention programs focusing on prenatal health in high prevalence Native American communities. Human Organization 64/2:192-200.
  • 2004. (with Carol S. Johnston and John F. Martin). Post-natal diet determines insulin resistance in fetally malnourished, low birthweight rats (F1) but diet does not modify the insulin resistance of their offspring (F2). Life Sciences 74/24:3033-3041.
  • 2003. The nutritional history of the Havasupai Indians of Northern Arizona: Dietary change and inadequacy in the reservation era and their implications for current health. Nutritional Anthropology 26/1-2:1-10.
  • 2001. (with John F. Martin and Carol S. Johnston). A reconsideration of the origins of the Type 2 diabetes epidemic among Native Americans and the implications for intervention policy. Medical Anthropology 20/1:25-63. 
  • 2000. (with John F. Martin, Carol S. Johnston, and Chung-Ting Han). Nutritional origins of insulin resistance: A rat model for diabetes-prone human populations. Journal of Nutrition 130:741-44. 
  • 1997. (with L.A. Vaughan, and J.F. Martin). Food acquisition habits, nutrient intakes, and anthropometric data of Havasupai adults. The Journal of the American Dietetic Association 97/11: 1275-82.