Epistīmonika Chronika (Jan 2017)
Latest data on obesity
Abstract
Obesity is a chronic and morbid disease which has reached epidemic dimensions nowadays, becoming the springboard for the emergence of other unfavorable metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus. In 2014 overweight and obese people in the world were estimated at 2.022 billion while prediction for 2025 is to reach 2.693 billion. Regarding the statistical data from Greece, we should note that overweight and obese individuals are estimated at 5.266 million for 2014. Obesity is a systemic disease with significant impact on human health, such as increased incidence of type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis ( knee, hip), cancers (mostly breast and endometrium for women and colon and kidney for men), cognitive disorders (dementia, Alzheimer's), mood disorders (anxiety, depression, emotional eating disorders), sleep apnea syndrome, cardiovascular disease (myocardial infarction, stroke) and increased incidence of all-cause mortality, reducing in this patern the overall life expectancy. The underlying pathophysiological disorders of obesity are complex and mostly not understood well. The main disorder is the disturbance of the human energy balance when intake calories are more than the calories consumed, thus an excess of energy is generated daily, which is stored by the body in the form of triglycerides in adipose tissue of the body. On the other hand, weight loss is very important since even moderate weight loss significantly reduces the comorbidities of obesity. For the treatment of obesity, we have dietary interventions (hypocaloric diets, very low calorie diets, special diets), exercise interventions, pharmacological interventions (Orlistat, Liraglutide, Naltrexone / Boupropion, Phentermine / Topiramate, Lorcaserin) and bariatric surgery (gastric banding, gastric Roux-en-Y by pass, sleeve gastrectomy). Despite all these, obesity remains an unsolved problem of our time with unmet needs that need combined global awareness from both the scientific community and the state.
