Obesity Causes and Treatment

Fat parents, fat children – doctors sound the alarm. The number of people with severe obesity continues to rise. Tips on diet and losing weight seem to have little effect. What can be done? Obesity is a mass phenomenon, especially in industrialized countries: The number of overweight people is increasing at an alarming rate, especially in childhood. Obesity limits the quality of life and shortens life expectancy. Obesity is a risk factor for many diseases, such as high blood pressure (hypertension).

From overweight to obesity

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people with obesity has tripled in the last 20 years. Mild obesity has little negative impact on health, to be sure. But it is already a sign that more energy is being taken in with food than is being consumed. Often, excess adipose tissue then continues to accumulate and the overweight progresses into obesity.

Obesity: diet as the main reason

Around one in five Germans now suffers from such morbid obesity. Among children and adolescents, about 15% are overweight and 6% are obese, according to a study by the Robert Koch Institute (KiGGS study). This means that 800,000 children and adolescents suffer from obesity. Particularly critical: obesity does not grow out, but increases with age.

The main reason is our diet: too much, too fatty, too high in calories. In addition, too little exercise is needed to utilize the excess calories. This means that the energy is not burned off, but stored for a rainy day. Only that these never come, and thus the fat stores grow. Being overweight often makes you sluggish and quickly gets you out of breath – which in turn doesn’t exactly promote the joy of exercise. So overweight and obesity are a vicious circle in which more and more people are caught.

Degree of obesity

Whether weight is still within the normal range, overweight is present, or obesity has already developed can be determined with the body mass index (BMI). BMI relates weight to height (BMI = kg/m²), with slight variations depending on age. For normal weight, the BMI is in the range of 18.5 to 24.9, for overweight up to 29.9; anything above this is obesity.

This is often further subdivided into three degrees – obesity grade I exists from a BMI of 30, obesity grade II from a BMI of 35, and obesity grade III (obesity permagna) from a BMI of 40. For example, a 170-cm woman has obesity grade I from a weight of 87 kilograms, while obesity permagna exists from a weight of 116 kilograms.