Tracing the historical perspective of obesity, its origin is dated back over 25000 years ago to our prehistoric ancestors. However, when an individual was overweight during the Middle stone period and 17th century, it indicated some sense of power, fertility, and prosperity. It was between 460BC -370BC when Hippocrates clarified that obesity is a health disorder that was a surplus of humor. According to Hippocrates, the human body has a balance of approximately four humor: blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black pile. Despite obesity being considered to be a sign of prosperity, Hippocrates is known to be the person to realize that obesity could lead to infertility. Historically, the issue of an individual being overweight and obese was scarce, and no one could study it since it was sometimes never seen. Compared to the contemporary world, obesity is a devastating health problem whereby almost 1 billion individuals across the globe are obese. As such, 650 million are adults, 340 million are adolescents, and 39 million are children. The population of obese individuals shows that obesity is a big concern recently, which is caused by lack of movement, poor eating habits, and genetics, whereby affects the self-image of an individual and leads to other diseases like stroke and diabetes that can eventually cause death.
Lack of movement is a factor that can cause obesity more quickly in the life of a person. However, lack of movement mainly occurs at workplaces, for example, jobs that entail sitting at a desk for long hours a day (Baillot et al., 2021). After completing their daily duties at workplaces, this group of people uses cars as a means of transport instead of walking. Another way in which lack of movement is too common in most households is that people tend to spend most of their time watching television, browsing computers, and playing games on these devices. All these activities make an individual not engage in physical activity. As such, if one is not active enough, the energy provided by the consumed food is not well used and later stored as fats, leading to obesity.
Genetics can also be a factor that can render a person associated with obesity health disorders. Some of the families’ lineages are associated with rapid weight gain. Similarly, some individuals gain weight as fast as possible because of genes as their body changes food energy into fats. Genetic traits can be inherited from parents, for instance, the habit of consuming many foods or having a large appetite (Rehman, 2022). During this condition, losing weight is a challenge because the more food is taken into the body, the more energy, which leads to storing a lot of fats. These groups of people have challenges when trying to lose weight. Despite genetics leading to obesity in most people, it is crucial to understand environmental factors like unhealthy eating habits and the inability o access healthy food.
Consequently, obesity is strongly believed to be caused by extra calories, later stored as fats in the body tissues. Suppose an individual consumes a high amount of energy, primarily found in fatty and sugary foods, and the energy is not used well through physical exercise. In that case, the excess energy is stored in the form of fats in the body (Al-Jawaldeh & Abbass, 2022). According to statistics, it indicates that the required calorie to be consumed into the body by a man should be 2500 calories daily for maintaining body weight. A woman must consume at most 200 calories daily to avoid weight gain (Al-Jawaldeh & Abbass, 2022). The number of calories required to be taken into the body can sound high, but it is easy to attain if particular foods are consumed, like the milkshake, which can have 1500 calories. Besides general diet can contribute to rapid weight gain, like taking a large amount of fast processed food, taking a large proportion of meals that one needs, and drinking sugary drinks.
According to the causes of obesity, some effects can be subjected to the obese person. Firstly, obesity affects the self-image of an obese person, whereby research and advanced clinical studies have confirmed that obese people are affected physically, socially, and emotionally. Obese individuals are always less confident, socially inactive, and emotionally unstable (Jia & Liu, 2021). Most obese people feel unattractive, which deteriorates their confidence and interaction with other individuals. Obese individuals are fond of being socially awkward and lonely. The challenges tend to occur without finding solutions whereby obese people are discouraged from engaging in physical exercises and having compulsive eating, including sedentary habits like staying indoors while eating and watching television.
Besides obesity affecting an individual’s self-image, it diminishes health conditions ranging from reproductive and respiratory functioning to memory. However, obesity can subject the affected person to deadly diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Excessive body weight is mainly associated with numerous risk factors of cardiovascular. As the body mass index accelerates, there is a possible occurrence of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, and inflammation (Jia & Liu, 2021). These changes in the body can lead to the emergency risk of heart diseases like stroke, heart failure, and cardiovascular death. These diseases ought to affect the functioning of the body’s organs leading to loss. Therefore, it is the increase in body mass index which rapidly leads to the occurrence of risk diseases which can easily cause death.
In conclusion, obesity is known globally that it is a devastating disease that has dramatically affected the life and health conditions of billions of people. Obesity was considered a sense of power and prosperity during the olden days. It was until Hippocrates confirmed that obesity is a health disorder that causes infertility. However, obesity is caused by several factors, like poor eating habits, lack of movement, and genetics. These risk factors must be managed to curb and reduce the rate of obese people around the globe. Following the causes of obesity, it has been confirmed by medics that environmental factors and behaviors cause it. Obese individuals need to understand how they can manage the level of energy taken into the body and the possible reasons behind gaining weight rapidly. Generally, obesity needs close and more consideration because this is a devastating problem that has occurred mostly in recent centuries because of the lifestyles that people have succumbed to.
References
Al-Jawaldeh, A., & Abbass, M. M. S. (2022). Unhealthy Dietary Habits and Obesity: The Major Risk Factors Beyond Non-Communicable Diseases in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Frontiers in Nutrition, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.817808
Baillot, A., Chenail, S., Barros Polita, N., Simoneau, M., Libourel, M., Nazon, E., Riesco, E., Bond, D. S., & Romain, A. J. (2021). Physical activity motives, barriers, and preferences in people with obesity: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 16(6), e0253114. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253114
Jia, W., & Liu, F. (Eds.). (2021). Obesity: causes, consequences, treatments, and challenges. Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, 13(7), 463–465. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mjab056
Rehman, A. (2022). Genetics and Obesity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK573068/
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