Obesity: Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, and Prevention - Essay Example

Obesity Epidemic Introduction If you have a walk in most of the towns in the United Kingdom and the United s of America, you will realize that most of the inhabitants suffer from a condition which is mostly assumed by many. The condition is called Obesity. When defined, it refers to the condition of a person having an extra amount of body fat. This fat may be taken into the body from mostly starch and other fast foods. Individuals having this condition mostly suffer from cardiovascular diseases, metabolic, cancer, non-communicable diseases, amongst a range of others. Obesity has now been declared a worldwide epidemic by the World Health Organization, after research indicated that it parallels to around 265 million adults and children around 15 million, simply meaning that there must be something we ought to do in order to regulate this situation and work towards an obese free world (Debasis & Preuss 30). According to Debasis and Preuss (38), for the last thirty years, there has been a drastic increase especially in childhood obesity. People should be asking themselves why there must be such a situation today. Take into consideration the situation of Barry Austin; he believed in eating so much that at one point he was heard saying that food was his god! Just at a mere age of 29, he was having a weight close to 320kg! From his close study, it was revealed that Barry’s breakfast consisted of four packets of crisps and almost three quarters a box of biscuits of which he consumed all. During lunch, which was from the chip shop, he would add several plates of beans on toast, additional Crips, and fruit cakes. If he was taking tea, he would have 12 roast potatoes, pie, custard, vegetables and gravy and 5 lamb chops. All these would then be cleared down the threat by 11 liters of soda every day. With respect to Hatfield and Stanton, they explain that studies have shown that Americans are consuming their foods well but not wisely. They further explain that the food habits have been growing for Americans every now and then. This is due to their ignorance in consuming a balanced diet. Some biological factors such as genes and the history of the family tend to increase the chances of developing obesity. Emotional factors could also be a contributing factor to this world catastrophe. One unique thing with obesity is that it doesn’t discriminate age nor gender. It affects the young and the old, the women and the men, blacks and whites, meaning that every kind of person is affected (Stern & Kazaks, 108). Obesity has symptoms that most people don’t recognize early enough. To start, there is this ever increasing body weight which doesn’t present itself. When individuals start realizing their weight gain, they become happier and in fact improve on it by eating heavily. This only becomes tragic after realizing they are obese. Other symptoms associated with the conditions may include fatigue after a short walk, shortness of breath, lethargy, sweating excessively, among others. When these obesity patients realize that the symptoms have persisted, they now visit a physician and during that time, it is usually late and the condition has overdeveloped. The good news with obesity medical complications is that, they start resolving themselves especially when the patient starts losing weight and all of a sudden the condition ends. If no measures are taken against the condition, the patient may succumb to the medical complications. There are best and cheapest ways of managing obesity which people need to consider but they just don’t. One of them is a simple physical exercise. Physical activity plays a big role in the physiological controlling of body weight where it lifts energy use and favor a negative energy balance. In addition, physical body exercise tends to enhance the capacity of fat oxidation in the body. Another means is through a person having enough sleep. I can’t understand why some people would deny themselves enough sleep of about 6 hours as recommended by physicians. Teenagers tend to watch movies sometimes overnight, thus depriving themselves the time the body needs to restructure. This leads to hormonal imbalance, thus the obese condition. Food imbalance also tends to cause obesity. People don’t observe this keenly, hence ending up consuming one type of food such as starch, resulting to a large consumption of calories. This piles up, thus reaching lethal level (Akabas et al, 35). Furthermore, the society needs to take other preventive measures such as reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened foods and beverages. This has dire consequences as sugar is a carbohydrate, which is highly addictive and contains a lot of calories that increase chances of developing obesity. They also need to reduce the period taken on the screen watching TV, videogames or movies. This applies particularly to children and teenagers. People need to reduce the barriers to the prevention and control of obesity, which are greatly caused by them. Moreover, the government has to reduce the disparities caused when accessing healthcare services for the patients. I think I have to blame obesity for stay in the onset of undesirable consequences. This makes people think they are safe when in the real sense they are not (Power & Schulkin, 78). Statistics from the Centre of Disease Control (2013) have it that 37% of the population in America are obese. This is nearly approaching a half the population. One may not understand why we should care about the obese people and their lifestyle. It estimated that from the year 1987 to 2007, 20% of the deaths were caused by obesity. This is greatly undesirable as the same obesity that kills also makes the patients lack mobility, thus making the family members have a burden of constantly looking after these people’s needs. The patients can’t also do simple things such as driving because they don’t fit in the cars. The restaurants, hotels and eat outs, the educational institutions and the government of America are amongst the few institutions that need changing for the American nation to achieve total fight against obesity. A problem always arises when the world clearly knows the causes, effects, preventive measures, and treatment methods but it doesn’t want to keenly observe them and control this vice. It is arguable that obesity is no longer one person’s problem but it is today an international catastrophe. Leaders of the world in all the fields especially medicine need to consider this seriously and step up their game. Without this we are going to sit there and see our children suffer and eventually die because of obesity. Power & Schulkin (29) argues that the battle of obesity now lies in our own backyard as Americans. The time has now come for us to call in reinforcements and go to war. We must just defeat it because this affects us while we know unlike terrorism which does so without our knowledge and preparation. The best place for us to start this change is in the educational institutions. The fast food companies should also not be left out as they are the main contributors to this. If confronted, they will give all their economic reasons about not changing their product lines, but we can’t just sit back, relax and watch as our able citizens die annually and not to cancer but to a curable condition like obesity. Conclusion To sum up, obesity is not caused by a virus. It is caused by our poor eating habits and therefore from the above, we must just change this. The preventive measures are very simple and cannot be taught in classrooms. They are things well known to most of us but doing away with ignorance is the best way out. We must make America and the whole world a better place to live! Work Cited Debasis Bagchi, Harry G. Preuss. Obesity: Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, and Prevention, Second Edition. CRC Press, 2012. Judith S. Stern, Alexandra Kazaks. Obesity: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO,, 2009. Michael L. Power, Jay Schulkin. The Evolution of Obesity. JHU Press, 2013. Sharon Akabas, Sally Ann Lederman, Barbara J. Moore. Textbook of Obesity: Biological, Psychological and Cultural Influences. John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Read More