Around twenty years ago, if a doctor branded an obese person an ill one seemed to be a discriminating and cruel act. To moderate the patient’s self-esteem, obesity was analyzed as a simple food behavior disorder which could be corrected by modifying certain habits. However, the alarming increase of cases around the world, added to the high incidence of the entailing morbimortality and the lack of therapeutic answer when the mal was focused as a simple habit change, motivated a social reconsideration and a new epidemiological focus on this ailment.
In a world which is ruled by high social contrasts, it is not strange that the two main causes of death around the world are associated with food and the economic power: malnutrition/ poverty and obesity/wealth. Nevertheless, nowadays we can not make a so simple division, as the number of obese people is more frequent in the lower classes of the population.
Obesity is a chronic disease with a multi-factor origin, which is developed by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors, characterized by the increase of the fat tissue, which is generally accompanied by weight gain risking the person’s health. Obesity takes place when the calories (energy) as the nutrients we take are higher than what it is necessary to keep our body functioning (basal metabolism) and our daily physical activity. That is to say, it is produced when we eat more than what we consume.
Ejemplo de Obesidad
This excess of calories is stored in our body like fat in the adipose tissue.
It is important to mention that to consider a person obese it is not enough to take into account only the body weight gain (bodybuilders, edematized patients, pregnancy), but there has to coexist the adipose tissue increase. Despite its chronic course, it is a pathology that can be indefectibly cured.
