Obesity: Causes, Effects and Treatments

Obesity , is one of the common and serious disease over the world. There must be cases of obesity no matter in urban or rural area, as it is a widespread and escalating concern. It does not just happen in adults as children also may have the possibility because they are less concern about their health nowadays. Obesity is actually a condition whereby abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health and also the genetic and environmental factors that are difficult to control when dieting. For the rate of obesity has been increasing in both adults and children. Obesity has twice increment around the world since 1980 and more than 1.4 billion adults, 20 and older were overweight. From these overweight adults, it has over 200 million men and approximately 300 million women were obese. According to a hefty new analysis from the Global Burden Of Disease Study 2013, it is stated that the number of overweight and obese people rising from 857 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2013. However, the rate change greatly throughout the world . More than half of the world’s 671 million obese individuals living in only ten countries, which is 15% combined at China and India, more than 13% at USA, Egypt, Brazil, Pakistan, Mexico, Russia, Germany and Indonesia. USA, one of the high-salary countries, has the highest increases in adult obesity, where approximately one third of the adult population are obese. In Australia, it is estimated around 28% of men and 30% of women are obese, and in UK is about a quarter of the population are obese. [ Refrence 1,2 ]

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There are mainly many risk factors of obesity. Obesity is mainly due to the overindulging unhealthy diet and eating habits. Many people just eat whatever they like without concern about the value of nutritious. Nowadays, many fast food outlets are opened and it is getting more and more all around the corner of the world. Those fast foods are a diet which is high in calories and the trans fats contained may raise the LDL cholesterol, or known as bad cholesterol and leads to heart attack or any other cardiovascular diseases. Examples of such food high in trans fats include French fries and cheese. Eating canned food and drinking too much sugary drinks or alcohol will also cause obesity, as the food and drinks contain high value in fat and sugar. Eating in a large portion and habits of comfort eating are also not good, since forcing yourself to eat much will cause an incomplete digestion. In order to reduce this risk, a healthy and balanced diet must be well-planned daily. A healthy and balanced diet should be consist of 7 main classes of food and the most important thing is to eat more vegetables and fruits. Reduce the intake on foods that are high in sugar and fat and you can also try replace kilojoule heavy desserts with fruits. Eat in a proper portion too to maintain a healthy body and weight. Other than that, lack of physical activity is also the vital factor leads to obesity. Nowadays, many people have jobs that involve sitting at a desk for most a day and also hectic lifestyle. They also rely on transportation such as bus or car rather than walking or cycling. Sometimes, even when the peoples have stress, the ways they choose to relax is by watching TV, playing computer games, and also surfing the internet. This kind of lifestyle can be known as sedentary lifestyle and so did not burn the calories in their body. Besides, if the energy provided by food is not used, the extra energy intake will be stored as fat in the body. Hence, regular exercise must be done because it helps in burning away the calories in human’s body. To maintain a good health, moderate intensity exercise should be done for at least 1 hour most days of the week. During the day, simple exercise such as take the stairs and also get up often from your chair or sofa may helps too. [ Refrence 3,4,5]

Obesity normally occurs when adipose cells, which adipose cells are cells that provide storage for extra energy, are increasing absurdly in size and also the number (hyperplasia). An increase in the size of adipose cell is called hypertrophic, while an increase in number of fat cell is known as hyperplastic. Thus, an increase in hypertrophic or hyperplastic resulting in obesity. Besides, adipose cells also follow a normal pattern of growth and development. For infance, adipose cells more developed and each cell grows greatly, which resulting in hypertrophic or hyperplastic obesity. While for adulthood, a person usually has a normal number of adipose cells, but there is large amount of fat in each cell. In certain extreme cases, adult-onset obesity can be both hypertrophic or hyperplastic. Then, the fat cells do not disappear in adult state once it developed. Furthermore, obesity also develops regularly as weight is gained over a period of time. When amount of energy which also means calories consumed in food and drinks exceed the energy used for exercise and metabolic processes in body, weight gain will occur. This is also known as positive energy balance. The excess energy will be stored as fat. Each kilogram of fat stores around 9000 kcal. When body needs more energy than available from food, the fat can be lost or reduced from the energy stores. This is well known as negative energy balance. So, a lack of energy balance may eventually cause obesity. [ Refrence 6,7 ]

Obesity has significant effects for health and it is linked to a wide range of diseases. One of the disease that is normally caused by obesity is coronary heart disease. Coronary heart disease is usually caused by a build-up of fatty deposits on the walls of the arteries around the heart. This layer of build-up acid is normally accumulated from the food that we eat daily. Foods contain high fat value will eventually build up the fatty deposit called atheroma. It is also made up of cholesterol and other waste substances. Once the atheroma build-up on the walls of the coronary arteries, this will make the arteries become narrower and reduce the blood flow to the heart muscle. This process is called atherosclerosis. If more severe, obesity can lead to heart failure which your heart cannot pump enough blood to meet your body requirement. In addition, type 2 diabetes is also one of the health problem caused by obesity. Those who are obese are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes disease. Being overweights will add more pressure on body’s ability to control blood sugar using insulin and so makes it much more likely to develop diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, body produces insulin but its insulin cannot be used properly. The body overproduce insulin at first to keep the blood sugar normal. But overtime, this cause the body to lose ability to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar level at a normal rate, and will eventually lead to kidney failure and heart disease. Furthermore, obesity may also lead to high blood pressure, which is known as silent killer.The blood wessels need to circulate more blood to the fat tissue, as the extra fat tissue in the body needs nutrient and oxygen to survive. Due to this, the workload of the heart will be increasing because more blood is needed to pump through the additional blood vessels. The more the circulating blood, then there is more pressure on the wall of the artery. Consequently, the higher pressure on the artery wall will increase the blood pressure. [ Refrences 8,9,10]

There are actually several ways to treat obesity. Obesity can be cured either by drug therapy or bariatric surgery, as it is a more effective treatment. For drug therapy treatment, there are two types of drug which are recommended as it can be used for long-term, which is orlistat and sibutramine. Orlistat is a gastrointestinal lipase inhibitor which helps to reduce patient’s weight around 3 kg on average and also decrease patients to be high risk in diabetes. It will be effective if low-calorie diet is alongside the treatment. In orlistat way of treatment, the fat is absorbed and digested into body. It then works on small intestine and stomach to avoid the action of two enzymes found in digestive juices. The enzyme is normally to break down the fat which consumed in meal. So, orlistat block the fat from being digested as it will passed out as faeces instead of being absorbed into body. Another drug, sibutramine which is known as a monoamine-reuptake inhibitor, can help to reduce weight and the mean of weight losses is around 4-5 kg, but is related to increase of pulse rate and blood pressure. Sibutramine is called as appetite suppressants in medication class and it works to decrease appetite by acting on appetite control centers in the brain. Furthermore, bariatric surgery , also known as gastrointestinal surgery helps to reduce weight in a rapid way, by altering the digestive process. The operation can be divided into two that is malabsorptive and restrictive. Malabsorptive weight loss surgery exclude almost all of the nutrients of small intestine from digestive tract to decrease amount of nutrients and calories absorbed. For restrictive weight loss surgery, it creates a narrow passage from the upper part stomach to larger lower part to reduce the intake of food and also slowing the passage of food to stomach. [ Refrence 11,12,13 ]

In conclusion, obesity disease should be more concerned and awared by everyone in the society as this disease increasingly on the rise nowadays. So, everyone must have well-planned for a health-enhancing lifestyle. Bad habit must be quited as fast as possible to save own life for a good health. There is a saying that healthy food is not tasty but however this is the golden phrase which leads everyone to a long-life span.

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