What is obesity, risk factors and how to combat it?
Obesity has become a worldwide health problem. But what is obesity? How is it treated or diagnosed?
Although traditionally excess weight has been associated with wealth, status and robustness, the truth is that extra pounds can have harmful health consequences. We cannot turn our backs on this reality: overweight and obesity have become a serious problem all over the world.
The data are alarming: 600 million people were obese in 2014 and more than 1.9 billion adults over the age of 18 were overweight. To make it clearer, this same percentage would translate to 39% of the adult population with overweight and 13% with obesity.
What is obesity?
Both overweight and obesity are defined as an abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat that is harmful to health. To find out if someone is overweight, body mass index (BMI), an indicator of the relationship between weight and height, is used. Specifically, it is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of his or her size in meters (kg/m2).
But then, when is it said that someone is overweight or obese? It is said that a BMI equal to or greater than 25 determines overweight, and a BMI equal to or greater than 30 determines obesity.
What causes obesity?
Obviously, the main cause of overweight and obesity is an energetic imbalance between calories consumed and those expended. Among other reasons, the current obesity epidemic is due to an increase in the intake of high-calorie foods rich in fat, salt and sugar, but poor in minerals, vitamins and other macronutrients; and an increase in sedentary lifestyles in many forms of work, which is accompanied by new modes of movement that require less physical activity and increasing urbanization.
How is it diagnosed?
Epidemiologically, a person is considered obese when their weight is 20% higher than that indicated for their physical constitution or when they have a BMI greater than 30.
When assessing obesity clinically, it is necessary to take into account many factors: family history, eating habits, psychological factors, socioeconomic factors, associated illnesses and the complete clinical examination of weight, height, waist and hip diameter, BMI calculation and waist-to-hip index calculation.
On the other hand, it is crucial to differentiate between overweight and obesity. In the case of overweight, this involves only an increase in body weight above a standard value and is generally correlated with height.
In recent years a classification has been determined for the different types of obesity that exist. Depending on the cellularity of the adipose tissue we distinguish between hypertrophic obesity, hyperplastic obesity and mixed obesity. Depending on the evolutionary history we can speak of obesity throughout life and obesity developed in adulthood. Finally, if we look at the distribution of body fat, we can classify obesity into obesity of homogeneous distribution, abdominal obesity, subcutaneous obesity, visceral obesity and gluteus-femoral obesity.
How is it treated?
ting obesity involves a number of measures. Among them are found:
Reduction of calorie intake. Many times, one of the main causes of obesity is over-nutrition. Therefore, it is usually necessary to reduce the caloric intake to convert the energy balance from positive to negative. In any case, the doctor should be the one to guide the most appropriate diet.
Increase in energy consumption. For people who, in addition to consuming more calories than they should, lead a sedentary life, the practice of physical exercise (always constant and progressive) should be one of the essential measures to take. The doctor will be responsible for developing a progressive exercise plan.
Pharmacological help. The use of various drugs is not uncommon in the treatment of obesity. They are usually medications that facilitate moderate weight loss and need to be combined with low-calorie diets in addition to physical exercise.
Psychotherapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and behavior modification techniques can be very helpful in changing harmful lifestyle habits into healthy ones.
Surgery. Although different types of dietary plans and obesity drug studies have been shown to be effective in weight loss, in most cases these losses are not sustained over the long term without profound changes in lifestyle habits. Because of all this, bariatric surgery is an effective long-term alternative to treat obesity and improve the associated diseases, quality of life and reduce mortality.
