"The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition"

Thomas Edison
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Obesity Epidemic

Treating people who are obese in Ireland is currently costing us a whopping €400 million annually say the findings of a new report to be launched by the Minister for Health James Reilly.

What is obesity?

To gauge whether a person has too much body fat an index called the Body Mass Index is used (BMI). BMI is a weight to height ratio that you get by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters.

mathrm{BMI} = frac{ ext{mass}( ext{kg})}{left( ext{height}( ext{m}) ight)^2}

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that for adults, the healthy range for BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9. Overweight is defined as a body mass index of 25 to 29.9, and obesity is defined as a body mass index of 30 or higher. BMI however does not measure body fat. For instance a muscular person may have a higher BMI but may not necessarily have too much fat.

Globally, there are 1.5 billion adults who are either overweight or obese, a number expected to increase to 3 billion by 2030.1

For more on this article click here.

Reference:

  1. Finucane MM, Stevens GA, Cowan MJ, et al. National, regional, and global trends in body-mass index since 1980: systematic analysis of health examination surveys and epidemiological studies with 960 country-years and 9.1 million participants. Lancet.2011;377:557-67.

 

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Posted on January 10, 2013 in Research.

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