Obesity

3 Pages 769 Words

Currently, in the United States obesity has become an epidemic. Everywhere you look your sure to see an individual’s that is overweight or even obese. “Results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2000 indicate that an estimated 64% of U.S adults are either overweight or obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more” (Defining Overweight and Obesity 1). What causes obesity? Is it our genetic make up? Is it Metabolic or Behavioral? Many different people from Doctors to scientist and even your plain Jane or average Joe would agree that the problem is within our society. As a whole we just plain over eat and have a lack of activity in our life. We need to watch our caloric intake of food by eating healthier. In addition, we as a nation need to get away from the “couch-potato” lifestyles and get a moving. The human body needs to burn the calories which we have consumed by some form of exercise. Walking, running, or riding your bike is a few activities we can do to improve our physical health.
Obesity is defined as an excessively high amount of body fat or adipose tissue in relation to lean body mass. How could we measure the amount of body fat to determine our body mass? Desirable weight stands are derived in a number of way, one way is by using a mathematical formal known a Body Mass Index (BMI), you can use heights and weights measured and collected on people who represent the U>S population by the National Center for Heath Statistics. You can measure Waist Circumference or even waist to hip ratio (WHR). * All of the following will give you a general standard to go by. Humans with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 are considered overweight and a BMI of 30 or more are considered obese.
But lets say your are eating healthy foods and are very active and you still seem to have a bit of a weight problem. Is their an obesity gene that can treated? Over the past many years, scientists ha...