Measuring And Understanding Obesity: Benefits, Methods, And Treatments

The rise of obesity worldwide

Question:

Write an essay about the public health. 

Since 1980, there has been an exponential doubling in the obesity cases worldwide. This increment has become the epidemic in much developed as well as developing countries. According to world health organization, there are around 1.5 billion adults who are overweight and 500 million adults who are obese in the year 2008. This measurement was based on the body mass index(BMI) a body fat. Obesity is a factor of risk for many diseases such as heart ailments, diabetes, asthma, etc. Along with such diseases obesity also affects the human capital. 

Since time, there has been the evolution of many alternate methods for measuring obesity, other than BMI. These methods are fat -free mass index, fat mass index, waist circumference, percent body fat, and waist- to-height ratio. All the different methods have come up with the different results. These methods came into existence because some researchers thought that body mass index could not differentiate between lean mass and fat mass and so alternate measures should be taken into account.  Like the waist circumference gave a better idea of predicting the fast level of glucose and low HDL- cholesterol levels while the percent body fat gave the idea about high HDL cholesterol levels. But in spite of all these the methods of BMI was preferred by most of the scientist because of its simplicity and consistency. Body mass index gives the relation between body mass and body height (Blüher et al., 2013). This has been considered as a reliable way to measure if a person has a too much body fat in comparison to their weight. In BMI, the two factors are to be kept in mind – body weight and body height. By seeing these two factors, the researchers could predict about the health status of the individual whether the person is normal weighted or obese person. The world health organization has kept a healthy range for BMI, which is between 18.5-24.9 in adults.  Both BMI and waist circumference methods could be considered as the best methods for measuring the health-related risks or obesity. In the waist circumference, the fat around the lower waist abdomen gives the idea whether the person is to develop any obesity-related health disorders or not. BMI is dependent upon the size of the body and weight whereas the waist circumference does not depend on such factors. As per the experiment conducted and the surveys done, the scientists found that the study on BMI and the waist circumference is the two best options for detecting any health related issues and towards obesity.

These two methods are the most preferred one because of these methods have many advantages over the remaining ones as they are efficient in providing the results for those patients who are at the border line of developing any health risk disorders.

These methods are a preferable one because of the various beneficial reasons it provides to the researchers as these two methods are the quick, simple and effective way of determining the health-related issues (Aihw.gov.au, 2016)

Measuring obesity: Different methods

BMI is a way to measure whether the person is healthy or not. This method is very popular among the doctors as it is a quick, simple and effective method which is applicable to both women and men as well as to children. It is a quickly accessible tool for measuring classification of weight (Landsberg et al., 2013). This method does not directly measure the fat of the body, but it measures more approximately the degree of fatness of the body in alone as compared to the weight. For BMI there is no requirement of the exact weight or measurement, but there is a range of classification where the individuals need to stand according to their body shapes and types (Aihw.gov.au, 2016)

The waist circumference method is also a beneficial one like the BMI as it can provide additional information on the visceral or intra-abdominal fat which is an important factor in determining the risk of obesity related diseases in the patient (Ford et al., 2014), as extra adipose tissue of the intra-abdominal region is highly related to the diseases of cardio vascular and also mortality (Flegal et al., 2012).The waist circumference ideally screens the possible health related risks with obesity. These two methods are the most important tool for measuring any disorders related to health conditions like obesity (Abbasi et al., 2013).  

Obesity is a growing problem in today’s world with more and more people getting into it. So there are many methods which determine the level of obesity and prevent them from increasing further (Ogden et al., 2014). These methods are the behavioral modification, pharmacotherapy, and surgical intervention.

Behavioral modification is one of the oldest methods of studying obesity. The most advanced behavioral therapy is the cognitive behavioral therapy.

The main principle of this therapy is that the patient with obesity has the uncontrolled habit of eating and patterns of exercise. the second one is the uncontrolled behaviors which could be modified with some special interventions leading to weight loss (Drawing Change, 2016)

Behavioral modification is an essential tool for the obesity treatment and prevention. But this modification is very difficult to incorporate in a people’s life as people are not ready to give up their habits and achieve a healthy life. Such people believe that lifestyles are the predominant thing which depends on upon their principles, values, and beliefs.  A double-blind controlled placebo experiment was done taking the behavioral modification into consideration where the patients were divided into two groups. One group was given the behavioral modification, and another group was not given. The psychological factors were one of the important components of this experiment. The people were given psychological counseling where they reduced much amount of weight with the help of his counseling and exercise therapy. To the other group, there was no effect as they were the controlled one and dint takes any such counseling.

So it was found that such psychological factors are mainly responsible for the modifications in the behavior among the obese patients which bring about such changes. The psychological factors were based on the analysis theory of transactional. This transactional theory makes use of the ego states. This ego state is defined as a complete system of feelings and thoughts which are controlled by the behavior pattern of the patients. This factor immensely helps the obese patients to overcome their obesity by defeating their daily life behavior.

The advantages of BMI and waist circumference

The study findings say that when a patient takes an obesity program based on such behavioral modification then, the ego state is significantly increased. This program has both negative and positive effects. The positive effects refer to the seeing of the negative side of the emotions and the acceptance of the brighter side of one’s life. The negative sides refer to the people not caring about any disease and having much of optimism towards the obesity because of the impulsive behaviors. This study interrelates between the carelessness and optimism regarding the prevention of the disease and behavioral pattern of modification.  Further this ego state has contributed much to the weight loss where it enables a patient to self-monitor their skill to get information and determine how they can adapt to such environment.

There are many issues related to the future work of such therapy like the factors which are involved in such experiments must be investigated thoroughly. There is also a need to improve the skills of self-monitoring and autonomy which may directly or indirectly contribute towards the weight loss in such experiments. Also, the nutrition therapy and the exercise in such experiments may differ and vary from patients to patients. Therefore, such parameters should also be kept in mind.  So it could be said that the ego state and the lifestyle patterns help in the obese patients to overcome their obesity if they continue with such therapy regularly. 

Pharmacotherapy serves as the pathway for the control of obesity. This therapy uses some drugs which affect the obese patients (Derosa et al., 2014).  This treatment prevailed before but now has been redefined with some controlled calorie diet. The drugs which are used in the pharmacotherapy are the long term and short term therapy. The long-term therapy uses the drugs like orlistat, and short-term therapy uses the drugs like amfepramone and phentermine are some drugs used in such weight loss therapy. Such therapies are modest usually and have greater efficiency when used alone or in some combination. In the past there were therapies like thyroid hormone one, aminorex, the drugs which have introduced in this therapy induces weight loss, reduces one's appetite or in the increment of satiety or the nutrients absorption is decreased, and energy loss also increases but now recently the new agents have been added in pharmacotherapy, these drugs do not induce such effects on the patients but treat them with modesty and mild affects and applications (Hada et al., 2015). There is a long-term debate going for the pharmacotherapy that certain agents used in this therapy are malnutritous and harmful but the scientists ruled out this saying that there are few drugs which have shown more interest in the therapy . some of the drugs have shown immense results in such therapy  .These drugs are orlistat which interferes with the fat absorption and thus lowers it and in turn lowers the weight in the obese patients. It also leads to the improvement of profiles of lipid, control of glucose, and other metabolic process. It also interferes with the absorption of the vitamins, and this lowers the weight in the obese patients. Another drug is the sibutramine  which is the most effective stimulant which helps the patient of obesity suffering from coronary heart disease stroke and arrhythmias.

Preventing and treating obesity: Behavioral modification, pharmacotherapy, and surgical intervention

Another drug named as Phentermine is also a stimulant but less powerful than the above drugs but it helps the patient to overcome the obesity. It is also very effective in the placebo-controlled trial (Konstantinos et al., 2015).

According to Gard’s work, the scientist has observed that the people are becoming obese because of their eating habits, stress, watching television, and responding less or giving less efforts towards exercise (Michael &Jan, 2005) So the scientist says that if people tend to become more attentive  by adopting  exercise and eating healthy at regular intervals then people won’t become that much obese and have a healthy life. The scientist also emphasized on the fact that people should be culturally active and realize the norms of the society. Gard has defined obesity as the epidemic one because of the social ideas which has been built by the people’s beliefs, ideals and values. This obesity has also become a topic of politics because it has given rise to the succinctly issues. this epidemic obesity has also triggered the sexual revolution because it assigns fatness to the people making them more sloth type and gluttony and thus causing embarrassment. 

Obesity is given the new definition as the syndrome of a new world which has been affecting many people around the world .Statistics reveal that the obesity has increased tremendously among both the groups that are men and women in the world. Now obesity is not a single disorder, but it is caused by the multiple causes which1 could be referred as the heterogeneous causes.  This could be due to the genetic factors, neurological problems, behavioral pattern, food habits, environmental and social-cultural problems (Bleich et al., 2012).

When it comes to the genetic problems, then it is seen that it is not the sole reason but also the environmental problems are associated with it. The presence of “ob” gene has been responsible for the obesity in the patients which codes for the adipose tissue.  Obesity can also be considered a complicated trait since many genes are involved in obesity (Locke et al., 2015)

Neurological problems are the major critics in the regulation of the weight, since many of the genes coding for the peptide and the proteins are present in the brain region which is crucial.  The increased activity of NPY in the obese patients is the cause of the obesity which is due to the neurological problems.

The environmental problems such as the energy increase or decrease or the little physical activity are the major factors for obesity (du Plessis 2014). Then the genetic and the metabolic factors are also responsible for the obesity which is directly or indirectly related to the environmental factors.  The eating disorders especially with the more carbohydrate food, also the alcohol consumption increases the obesity (Li et al., 2016).

There are patients who restrict themselves to eating and later on crave for them, and this leads towards the psychological factors which also tends to increase the obesity in the patients

Then there are also other factors which lead towards the obesity such as the cardiovascular, respiratory diseases, malignancies, and gastrointestinal disorders.

To prevent obesity, there were many policies framed to give patient relief and curb their habits . In the year 2001, the general surgeon named as the call to action to prevent and decrease overweight and obesity recognized obesity as the key element for the patient health disorder. So the government has made a wide range of programs and policies such as the labeling of nutrition on the packaged and processed foods so the people having the food could have full knowledge about what they are eating, then guidelines of clinics at the national levels which make the people aware as what and where they have to make changes in their life. Other policies are education and efforts at social marketing levels and increased access to fresh fruits and food and also the interventions on a community (Hawkes et al., 2015).  

Conclusion

Thus, obesity is not a disease, but it is a multi-factorial disorder which people don't realize that when and where they have entrapped people and caused them damage. It is an increasing alarm in today population, and the people themselves have to do something about it by either changing their lifestyle or by incorporating some weight related management programs. If this disorder is overlooked, then it may result in to a great loss by hampering the life of the people. The obesity is a type of choice which depends upon the patient whether they want to take it or not. People should understand the problems of obesity at the root level and then incorporate the programs in to their lives. The acceptance or removal of obesity depends on entirely upon the people and their choice of taking decisions. The decision taken should be very carefully taken by seeing the person beliefs and principles.  

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