What is obesity?
Obesity is a chronic and degenerative disease, that requires long-term management, its resolution does not depend on the patients will and it is linked to more than 20 comorbidities that lead to a very high medical risk of disability or premature death. This disease has reached a high percentage worldwide (it is called a pandemic). Every year at least 2.8 million people die from obesity or being overweight.
What are the obesity related diseases?
- Type 2 Diabetes.
- High blood pressure (hypertension.)
- sleep apnea
- High cholesterol or triglycerides.
- Heart diseases.
- Fatty liver (can progress to cirrhosis even if the patient has not drunk alcohol).
- low back pain
- Neck pain.
- Polycystic ovary syndrome, infertility.
- Gastroesophageal reflux.
- Urinary incontinence.
- Cancer (there is evidence that certain cancers are linked to obesity, eg: Endometrium, breast, colon, clear kidney cells, among others).
What are the causes of obesity?
Losing weight is so much more than eating less and exercising more.
Multple factors may cause a person to be (become) obese. For this reason treatement can be difficult. Some of the causes that impact a obesity are: genetics, behaviours and lifestyle, energy imbalance, metabolic and hormonal influences, food choices, enviornment, etc. When compared to a patient of healthy weight, an obese person may have a greater absorption of calores from the same foods.
How do we classify obesity?
Using the Body Mass Index (BMI) weight (kg) divided by the square of their height in metres.
The higher the BMI, the greater probability of suffering from obesity-related diseases and having an early death. Obese patients may have to spend 50% more on medical care than non-obese patients, and 80% more on medications.
In addition, the BMI helps us to offer different therapeutic alternatives.
Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery
Hospital Universitario Austral | Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery