admintreatable with the implementation of sustainable educational programmes and improved healthcare policy.
Obesity among children is also on the rise and is a common cause of type 2 diabetes and a variety of cardiovascular conditions. The heart is the hardest working muscle in the body. It spends every second pumping blood throughout the body and obesity causes it to work harder and become less efficient.
Beyond cardiovascular conditions, excess weight will have other negative consequences throughout the body. Excess body fat negatively affects the brain and nearly every organ in the body as well.
A poor lifestyle causes excess weight to accumulate over many years. Even a small amount of excess weight can lead to type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Type 2 diabetes can cause numerous severe health conditions including heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, nerve pain, blindness, amputation and even death if the condition goes undiagnosed or if it’s poorly controlled.
Small weight gains, big health problems
Globally there has been a rapid growth in commercialised foods that are laced with excess sugars and unhealthy fats. Sadly, these foods are readily available around every corner and in nearly every take-away restaurant.
A healthy diet must be a long-term lifestyle change versus a short-term one. Fad diets, New Year resolutions and other quick fixes may cause one to lose weight short-term but commonly result in even poorer health long-term. Maintaining weight loss is the most common challenge and success requires sustained changes not only in our diet but in our physical activity levels as well.
Body weight is dependent on how much food one consumes and how efficiently the energy is utilised. Weight gain results when one takes in more than they burn. To lose weight one needs to take in fewer and burn energy more efficiently.
The complicating factor is that it’s common for one’s metabolism and the ability to burn energy to diminish as we age. This is one of the reasons that small weight gain occurs over time and will eventually add up to big health problems.
Active prevention does not mean sitting and waiting for a disease to develop. Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease develop silently over 20, 30 and 40 years of “good” health. A diagnosis is usually not genetics related but rather decades of poor choices.
Relying on medications to treat lifestyle-based conditions never work.
One’s blood pressure or blood sugar may be in check with medications but it is common for other conditions to develop without changing the lifestyle factors that produced the problems in the first place.
Lifestyle factors are meant to be practiced for life. If you have high blood sugar, a doctor is not going to tell you to manage it for six months and then do whatever you want after. Managing one’s weight is a similar scenario. It’s a lifetime goal.
Maintaining one’s weight is an ongoing process that requires constant work but has positive long-term results.
Individuals who lose even modest amounts of weight through diet and exercise will greatly reduce their chances of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Obese children are at greatest risk of developing early heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and other serious illnesses. The treatment of these conditions via medications versus lifestyle intervention causes the problems to continue to get worse. This is such a problem that some health experts expect children to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
Interventions such as limiting the amount of TV and eliminating sugar-sweetened drinks can help lower a child’s weight and eliminate the link to life-threatening health conditions in the future.
You become what you constantly see
Obesity and overeating is usually viewed as a lack of personal responsibility but biological research has found that it is strongly linked to one’s psychology as well.
Healthy lifestyle behaviours that are ignored early in life will contribute to how one thinks and feels later in life.
It is rare for a child to exercise if their parents do not exercise themselves. Positive role models early in life are critical for one’s long-term health.
This column is directed by your questions, comments and inquiries. The health advice provided is in collaboration with the World Health Organisation’s goals of disease prevention and global healthcare education. Views do not necessarily reflect endorsement. Email: [email protected] “Like” our Facebook page: The Dr Health Show
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