World Obesity day, World Obesity Day celebrated last March 4, promoted by the World Obesity Federation, is an anniversary created with the aim of increasing knowledge on the pathology of obesity and promoting prevention and treatment policies.
Obesity: what the current and future data say Obesity
represents one of the main public health problems worldwide , affecting about 800 million people with a global cost expected by 2025 of 1 trillion dollars.
In Italy there are currently 18 million overweight adults (35.5%) and about 5 million obese, that is one in ten people. In children, ISTAT certifies, one in three, in the age group up to eight years, and obese. Italy ranks first in Europe for childhood obesity and fourth in the world, preceded by the USA, New Zealand and Greece.
According to WHO data , the number of obese people in the world has tripled since the 1970s and childhood obesity has quintupled since forty years ago. It is a true global epidemic that is spreading in many countries and that could lead to very serious health problems in the coming years and a huge clinical and economic impact, being obesity an important risk factor for type 2 diabetes (45% of cases), for cardiovascular diseasesand for some forms of cancer (up to 41%).
What are the risk factors
Obesity is a multifactorial disease , influenced by genetic, environmental and psychological factors.
At the base there is an incorrect diet, characterized by foods with a high energy value and low satiating power, the so-called junk food , or “junk food”; processed foods, high in calories, refined carbohydrates and fats, with low consumption of fiber.
Excess malnutrition and poor physical activity prevail , while we are witnessing the decline of the Mediterranean Diet , healthy because it is based on simple, fresh and local ingredients.
Obesity is characterized by excessive weight gain due to the accumulation of adipose tissue : it is defined through the body mass index, a biometric datum that compares weight and height. They are considerate:
- obese subjects with BMI body mass index greater than 30 kg / m squared;
- overweight individuals with BMI between 25 and 30.
Pathologies resulting from obesity Obesity
is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide for:
- chronic non-communicable diseases ;
- cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, heart attack, hypertension ;
- type 2 diabetes;
- autoimmune diseases, pathologies whose onset is favored by the chronic inflammatory state of obese subjects.
Overweight and obesity favor the onset of allergic diseases, degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer ‘s and, by reducing immune surveillance, even cancer.
Obesity and Covid-19 Obesity is
a major risk factor for Covid-19 mortality for the development of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Recent studies published in Obesity Reviews, the journal of the World Obesity Federation, found that 43% of people hospitalized for Covid-19 were obese, requiring hospitalization in intensive care and with a mortality rate higher than 26% compared to normal weight people.. For this reason, people with obesity as frail subjects have been included among the priority categories in the vaccination campaign against Covid-19.
The need for information on
obesity There are many prejudices and stigma around the subject of obesity, obesity is not a condition that arouses empathy because responsibility is attributed to those who suffer from it and we think of the regulation of body weight as a matter of simple “will” or simple adjustment of the diet. For years the media have ridiculed certain bodies by imposing a model of physicality aimed at the pursuit of standard and perfection.
Education, information and a cultural turning pointthey are essential to facilitate the awareness of both the obese person who must be aware of having a disease and therefore of having to contact a professional. Even public opinion and parts of the health care world have a superficial view of the problem and globally many health systems are discriminatory in access to care and treatment and do not offer the obese patient a level of care as for other chronic diseases, such as cancer and diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
In Italy there are limited therapeutic education and lifestyle modification programs, no drugs available for obesity and reimbursable by the National Health Serviceand access to bariatric surgical therapy is still very difficult.
