Obesity has become a serious health problem in the world today and it is one of the major causes of the variety of diseases worldwide. Since 1980 it’s prevalence across the globe has doubled. Obesity was once a normal occurrence but has become an epidemic in the United States which is a major health concern. From research it has been discovered that more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight, including children.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2014 more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these, over 600 million people were obese. It was also recorded that 39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2014, and 13% were obese.
According to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), nearly one-third of the World’s population is obese or overweight from the data supplied, from 188 countries.
Obesity can also be called corpulence or fatness and it has also been regarded as an abnormal state which, in the United States, has been estimated to have caused 111,909 to 365, 000 deaths per year. Worldwide the death toll is believed to be approximately 2.8 million. The highest number of obese persons are situated in the Pacific Islands, east of Australia.
Obesity is a medical condition which occurs because of an excessive accumulation of fat or triacylglycerol in the body. The fat has accumulated so much that it has a negative effect on the health of an individual. Obesity is also defined as the excessive accumulation of fat in the body usually caused by the consumption of more calories than the body can use. The excess calories are then stored as fat, or adipose tissue. Being overweight is not essentially obesity, particularly in well-built or big-boned persons.
Causes of Obesity
People can become obese for the following reasons.
- Taking or consuming too many calories: If a high amount of energy, particularly fat and sugars, are consumed and not burnt off through exercise and physical activity, much of the surplus energy will be stored by the body as fat. The energy value of food is usually measured in units called calories. Calories provide the energy needed for the proper functioning of the body and other physical activity, but unused calories can lead to weight gain and the body will convert and store excess calories as fat and these can lead to obesity.
- Endocrine disruptors: Endocrine disruptors are environmental chemicals with hormone-like activity that, at certain doses, interfere with the endocrine system and they tend to disrupt the programming of endocrine signaling pathways. Endocrine disruptors can also be in the form of environmental pollutants which interfere with the lipid metabolism. Humans are usually exposed to these Endocrine disruptor chemicals through direct contact with chemicals such as herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and fumigants and they can be exposed to these chemicals by the ingestion of contaminated water or food. Endocrine disruptors can also make their way into the environment from various sources because of many manufacturing processes and the burning of plastics and other materials. Therefore, the rapid increase of the environmental burden of chemical toxins coincides with the rising epidemic of obesity and this chemical, so-called ‘Obesogens’ might predispose some individuals to gain weight despite their efforts to reduce the amount of calorie intake and increased levels of physical activity.
Chemicals that are known as endocrine disruptors include diethylstilboestrol (the synthetic oestrogen DES), dioxin and dioxin-like compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT
(Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), and some other pesticides.
- Lack of sleep or insufficient sleep: Sleep is an important modulator of the neuroendocrine function and glucose metabolism and loss of sleep has shown to have resulted in metabolic and endocrine alterations, including decreased glucose tolerance, decreased insulin sensitivity, increased level of ghrelin(ghrelin is the hunger hormone which is also known as lenomorelin and it is a peptide hormone which is produced by ghrelinergic cells in the gastrointestinal tract which functions as a neuropeptide in the central nervous system), decreased level of leptin (Leptin is known as the Satiety hormone which is made by adipose cells that regulate energy balance by inhibiting hunger and when there is a decreased level of leptin, obesity occur resulting in an inability to detect satiety despite high energy stores) and increased hunger and appetite which will make an individual consume more food than normal and also consume junks and these can lead to obesity. Sleep loss can expose an individual to a very high risk of obesity.
