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Obesity In America

Excess weight is a major medical problem for more than one-third of Americans and, after cigarette smoking, is the second largest cause of death.   Obesity is a widely spread nutritional disorder that can affect anybody, at any age, across North America.   “According to recent reports, more than 6 in 10 adults are overweight or obese, and the number of overweight children is on the rise.”   (www.mcdonalds.com)  

Today’s challenge in health care is to prevent or diagnose, treat, and manage acute or chronic diseases that affect many people while controlling cost, maintaining standards of care, and improving quality of life.   Obesity happens to be one such treatable disease because of its association with physical, psychosocial, and disability costs that affect quality of life.   For the severely obese, it is a chronic, heterogeneous, multisystemic disease that has many causes and consequences.

The majority of the reason that obesity is such an epidemic in North America is because of the number of fast food restaurants available.   With fast food restaurant prices being so low, people are not making the right decisions as to what type of food they consume in their diet.   These types of foods are not only high in calories, but also contain too many carbohydrates which causes undesired weight gain.  

It is not always an individual’s dietary decisions that make them obese.   Genetics play a monumental factor in a person’s weight.   For example, if a child is born with two obese parents, there is an 80 percent chance that the child will be born or become obese later in their lives.   Recent findings show the importance of genetic factors as a major influence in the nature of obesity.   Aggressive, medically supervised interventions, such as very-low-calorie diets and pharmacologic and surgical treatments, are especially needed for genetically susceptible individuals who do not respond to low-risk dieting and behavioral modification treatments or cannot maintain a healthy...