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The Issue Of Obesity |
By:
Scotch Q. Ennis |
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The Issue Of Obesity
by Scotch Q. Ennis
The word obesity gets often thrown around, but what is it really? What is obesity? Obesity is, in explicit terms, a description for extreme over weight. Obesity is quite prevalent, affecting almost a third of American adults -- sixty million or so people -- and roughly a billion people across the world.
You didn't read that wrong: nearly one billion persons the world over are obese.
As the obesity prevalence in the United States suggests, obesity is a condition found mostly in Western culture. In somewhat of a twist, obesity is referred to as a nutritional disorder. No matter the way it's labeled, obesity prevalence is increasing: between 1991 and 1998, obesity rates just about doubled.
The method specific for categorizing obesity is twenty percent beyond typical weight. With body fat, obesity occurs at twenty-five percent or more body fat for males, and thirty percent or more body fat for females. Body mass index (BMI) is a common method for measuring obesity. A BMI reading greater than 30 is considered to be obese.
Since it's become so common, obesity is frequently impacting the financial costs societies are paying. In the UK, annual obesity expense is estimated to be a billion pounds: about five hundred million US dollars, as things currently stand. The cost the UK pays for obesity is considerable, without question, but these costs represent just a small percent of what the US is paying. In the US, the annual monetary expense for obesity within the population is estimated at an incredible two hundred billion dollars. With prices like these, it isn't hard to understand the reason that obesity iscommonly being labeled "epidemic" in the US.
The reason for obesity's extreme financial cost isn't some secret: obesity is a condition that can have serious medical consequences. Obesity is the number one cause of chronic illness, and is just behind cigarette smoking in deaths caused. Obesity health problems reads like a grocery list: linked to coronary disease, stroke risk, Type 2 diabetes, joint strain from excess weight load. The obese tend to have extreme triglycerides levels, and low "good" cholesterol HDL levels.
Obesity is also connected with various sorts of cancer: kidney, throat, breast, colon, rectum. There's even some evidence that obese people have higher rates of Alzheimer's disease. And if the previous wasn't enough, a link exists between obesity and depression. All of these medical problems, multiplied by millions and millions of obese citizens. The end result is an enormous medical charge.
While it's true that certain health conditions can actually cause obesity, rather than obesity being the cause of health conditions, this is a very rare situation. Secondary health conditions causing obesity is believed to make up but one percent of all obesity cases. Of all obesity afflictions, a large majority are due to lifestyle choices.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article54074.html |
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