All of us are well aware of the negative impact that obesity can have on our lives. Here is a sampler.
Obesity is a major risk factor for several chronic disease conditions, including coronary heart
disease (CHD), type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, selected cancers, and musculoskeletal disorders, as well as all-cause mortality.
On the economic scale, obesity still bites a big chunk of the global economy. Medical costs associated with overweight and obesity may involve direct and indirect costs.Surely, obesity is a heavy weight to bear, whichever way you look at it.
And now, according to the Lancet authors, Dr. Phil Edwards and Dr. Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine, being obese ca be bad for the enttoo.
Compared with the normal weight population, the obese population has been shown to consume 18% more food energy. The obese also add on to increased transportation energy expenditure.
And to top it....................Obesity can be contagious too......
Obesity can spread from person to person, . much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. When a person' gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involving a detailed analysis of a
large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003 found that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person's chances of becoming obese by 57%.
There was no effect when a nei~hbor gain~d or lost weight, however, and family members had
less influence than friends.
Proximity did not seem to matter: the influence of the friend remained even if the friend was hundreds of miles away. And the greatest influence 0f all was between mutually close friends, There, if one became obese, the odds of the other becoming obese were nearly tripled.
The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the investigators say.
If the new research is correct, it may mean that something in the environment seeded what many call an obesity epidemic, leading a few people to gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly.
It also may mean that the way to avoid becoming fat is
to avoid having fat friends.
All this is not to hurt the sentiments of people who are obese. Nevertheless, it makes us aware of the impact of obesity on the society.
Surely it is time to act and
help people lose that extra flab.