Personal Health Project: Obesity - Research Paper Example

Personal Health Project: Obesity The topic of my personal health project is obesity. Obesity is a known hazardous health condition which can gravely affect a person’s life and health yet many underestimate the seriousness of this illness. Obesity is a state when a person has excessive fat accumulation in his body and is associated with many health problems and a significant reduction in life expectancy due to the many complications arising from it. I have chosen this topic for my project because a large majority of people view this topic from a very superficial perspective and are only concerned if they look fat or not while ignoring the complications associated with this condition. In this project I wish to highlight the risk factors which contribute to obesity, how prevalent it is, the complications of obesity and how to diagnose it. At the same time it also presents my case of how I tackled obesity and an evaluation of the hindrances I faced and observed in other people. PART I According to the world health organization overweight and obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat that presents a risk to health. There are different ways to quantify it but the most commonly used method is of Body mass index(BMI). BMI is the weight of a person in kg divided by their height(in meters) squared. A BMI of 25 or above is considered overweight while a BMI of 30 or above is considered obese. (WHO) Obesity is associated with a number of disease including Diabetes, hypertension, cerebrovascular disease and cardiovascular disease etc. It is also associated with certain cancers e.g. ovarian, breast and endometrial. Most of these conditions cause premature death or long term disability. The consequences of these problems in terms of burden on healthcare systems and the family resources are immense. Ironically most of these problems are easily preventable. (Ricker Polsdorfer) Obesity is a major health problem globally. Every third adult on this planet is overweight. Initially it was only considered a disease of developed countries, but gradually there is increasing incidence of obesity in less developed countries as well. It is the fifth leading risk for deaths in the world, contributing to a large number of diseases. In 2008 a total of 1.5 billion people were overweight of these 1.5 billion, 200 million were men while over 300 million were women (WHO 2011). Hence it is more prevalent in women. Apart from the obvious health consequences of obesity, it is a very distressing issue in terms of body image. In this body image obsessed world it is very hard for an obese person not to suffer the psychological problems associated with obesity. This problem is more pronounced in case of women. As opposed to the previous perception of bigger being beautiful, these times demand a size zero from the fairer sex in order to be attractive. It is because of these facts that I feel that obesity is more of a problem in women compared to men. There are many risk factors associated with obesity but the ones most significantly associated with it are having an unhealthy or unbalanced diet. Increased calories in the diet that are surplus to the requirements of the body lead to obesity. This risk factor is often coupled with another one i.e. sedentary lifestyle. This whole complex leads to more calories coming into the body than what is burnt out during exercise. The mechanism of developing obesity is not as simple as it sounds. A major controlling factor in this scenario is basal metabolic rate which depends on a lot of factors both environmental as well as internal. For example certain hormonal deregulations can cause a low basal metabolic rate and hence lead to obesity. While simple things like skipping breakfast can lead to a lowering of basal metabolic rate and consequently obesity. It is important to take one’s meals at proper times. Inappropriate sleep, working varied shifts, age, medical conditions and genetics are other risk factors that influence obesity. Obesity is more common in certain races. Black middle aged women and Mexican American women are 66% and 68% obese respectively compared to only 45% of white women in America. (Ricker Polsdorfer) Personally I have had the most important risk factors for obesity for a very long time. I have been working shifts at a departmental store which would include two night shifts every week for a few years now. My caloric intake is very high and I have a very sedentary lifestyle. I do not exercise as I never find time for it and have to eat lots of chocolate to keep me awake at night during my shifts. I know I was predisposed to obesity and it started to show during my teenage as well. I also have a medical condition called polycystic ovary disease which is another risk factor for obesity. Collectively these risk factors are very worrying and they have resulted in a very high BMI of 32. Most of the female members of my immediate family are obese. My mom and aunts are obese and are suffering from Type 2 Diabetes. Diagnosis of obesity is not very difficult. As mentioned earlier BMI is a very crude way of identifying and quantifying obesity. Other measures as hip to waist ratio are also reflective of the level of obesity of a person. These measures are crude because they do not take into account whether the weight of the person is mostly fat or muscle. Some very muscular people can have a very high BMI without being fat. There are lab tests that can accurately determine the body fat content of a person but they are too expensive for common use. Hence your doctor can diagnose you with a combination of visual assessment, BMI and waist to hip ratio. Obesity is difficult to treat as it involves major lifestyle changes on part of the patient. Major changes that need to be incorporated include changes in dietary habits, lifestyle changes including incorporating exercise in one’s daily routine, adjusting sleeping patterns etc. Medicines have a very limited role to play in obesity as they are not very safe or effective. Bariatric surgery is reserved for patients who have morbid obesity and are facing life threatening consequences because of it. Alternative therapies for the treatment of obesity mostly rely on herbal stimulants like Ma huang, guarauna, garcinia and gogul gum. Most of these agents have not been tested for safety and efficacy. There are documented side effects of some of these medicines. It is not advisable to use them for treatment of obesity from a medical point of view. (VINCENT MORELLI, 2000) Information regarding obesity is easily accessible on the internet. Most of the information can be obtained by a thorough search on any search engine. Sources for this information included WHO fact sheet on obesity and Aurora healthcares website which included a scholarly article on obesity and its management. Information regarding alternative therapies for obesity has been taken from a scholarly article on Journal of American Family physicians. The information on web is not limited to these few sources and the information is from unbiased and reputable sources. References: Ricker Polsdorfer, MD. "Conditions in Depth: Obesity." 9 January 2011. . VINCENT MORELLI, ROGER J. ZOOROB. "Alternative therapies part 1." American Association of Family Physicians (September 2000): 62(5):1051-1060. WHO. March 2011. . PART II After reading the literature available on obesity I decided to seriously address this issue and start taking steps so that I can control my weight at an early stage before the complications associated with obesity start to manifest in my body. In order to achieve this the most important step was to recognize my obesity as a problem which would not resolve overnight but one in which I would have to be resolute to overcome while also be patient to notice visible results. After this I made account of my current activities and highlighted the ones which were modifiable and leading to weight gain. These included my unplanned meal times which lead me to eat whenever I felt hungry, my high calorie diet and my sedentary lifestyle. Since I felt that setting up a very strict schedule for myself to follow immediately would eventually lead me to abandon the whole project just as suddenly, I decided to take a conservative approach. First I approximated an average of how much my calorie intake was every day and then I substituted the food items which had high calories with other items for e.g. I stopped eating chocolates and instead ate items like fiber biscuits etc. I realized the importance of maintaining a balanced diet so that I do not compromise on my body’s requirements and thus I started to plan and eat three meals a day instead of whenever I was hungry. In these meals I tried to include more of fresh and natural products instead of cooked foods like bakery items. Eating meals at fixed time was hard to adopt initially but as I started to manage time better (which was also my ‘making change’ goal) I found it easier. Once I felt comfortable that I was exercising adequate control over my diet ( which was after about a period of two weeks) I started to walk at least thrice a week. Initially I started with a low target and started brisk walking till I broke sweat for five to ten minutes and then gradually started to increase my duration of walking. Gradually as I felt that I was getting bored of walking I started to swim as I realized that the important fact was to maintain that I was burning more calories than ingesting them. These exercises too became more easier to manage as I started managing time better. After continuing these activities for a month I started to note my weight every weekend. The reason to wait a month before doing so was to make sure that I do not get ahead of myself and get frustrated if I didn’t see results quickly. Now gradually I am noticing that my weight has reduced significantly (about four kilos in almost two months) and although my progress might seem very slow I am satisfied as I did not have to over burden myself. At the same time I am enjoying my new schedule since I did not race into it and I feel I can easily continue it. This is also because I am taking every single day at a time and focus more on keeping my calorie intake less than my calorie expenditure (by comparing it to my previous schedule) instead of weighing down myself with strict and unrealistic schedules. PART III As mentioned above one of the first things I focused on before starting to exercise control over myself was to appreciate the hazardous effects of obesity and that I would have to undertake whole hearted efforts to tackle it. This I feel was the most important step before I adopted any life-style modification and also the reason for my success. Also I feel my conservative approach has helped me a lot and with these tips in mind I decided to discuss the issue of obesity and how to prevent it with my friends and colleagues especially the ones I felt were facing the same problem as me. From these discussions I felt that part of the reason many people found it hard to control their weight was that they didn’t comprehend obesity as a disease instead of a matter of cosmetics. What I evaluated from the discussions is that it is important to realize obesity as a disease just like any other illness for e.g. diabetes and that it is important to treat it. Instead many people viewed it as a social stigma and focused on looking slimmer. This approach in my view put more pressure on them as these people started to associate their weight to their social standing and thus put a lot of strain on them both mentally and psychologically. The strains on them because of this eventually lead them to drop their efforts to reduce weight and gradually they got a very low morale and started to view weight reduction as a very daunting task. With this observation in mind I now hope to spread the knowledge I have of obesity and make people see obesity for what it is i.e. an illness that needs to be treated and not a social disability while at the same time propose to initiate efforts to control weight one step at a time and not make drastic changes to their lifestyles suddenly as it leads to poor consistency and more psychological problems. Read More