More adults suffer from massive obesity

Every second person is overweight

04/10/2013

In Germany, one in two fights with a high body mass index and is therefore overweight. One in four even suffers from extreme weight gain. More than 300 experts will exchange views on new treatment and diagnostic options for adiposity at the annual meeting of the German Obesity Society in Hanover on Friday.

According to the company more than half of all Germans are too heavy and one in four citizens even suffers from extreme overweight. In children and adolescents, obesity is progressing faster and faster. 15 percent of the three to 17-year-olds or 1.9 million children and adolescents are already overweight in Germany. Depending on the definition, this is 10-20% of all schoolchildren and adolescents.

The increasing levels of obesity in children and adolescents are completely inadequate offerings of adequate treatment options. Unfortunately, this leads to the fact that the affected families and young people accept commercial offers for rapid weight loss, without recognizing the dangers and side effects.

More and more operations
In the fight against morbid obesity, more and more surgical procedures are performed. The use of gastric bands or gastric reduction is intended to make it easier for patients to lose weight. According to the head of the Obesity Center of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Oliver Mann, around 2.5 million people have arrived in Germany „workable weight“. Although the number of overweight people is currently not rising significantly, the proportion of morbidly overweight people is increasing dramatically. The reason is our way of life: We eat too much and move too little. „If we continue like that, we'll choke on our fat“, so the expert.

Worldwide increase in obesity
But not only Germany is affected. The incidence of obesity is increasing worldwide in all industrial nations. Alarming is also the extent of obesity and thus the number of extremely obese people. The causes for this are manifold, one speaks also of multifaktoriell, and exist among other things in changing living conditions. Whether excessive intake of high calorie and high-fat foods, physical inactivity or genetic predisposition, as a result, there is always an increase in the body's fat mass. (Fr)

Picture: neroli