CHILDHOOD OBESITY AND DIABETES

Correlation between Childhood Obesity and Diabetes

Correlation between Childhood Obesity and Diabetes

Introduction

Obesity is a chronic disease characterized pathologically (painfully) excessive accumulation of body fat. Obesity may develop due to disorders of lipid metabolism in connection with diseases of the endocrine or central nervous system (secondary, symptomatic obesity). Much more frequently (90 - 95% of cases), obesity is caused by poor nutrition, when energy intake from food exceeds energy expenditure of the body, leading to a nutritional (primary) obesity. Of course, there may be a combination of primary and secondary obesity. Symptomatic obesity can be eliminated during the treatment of the underlying disease. Alimentary obesity requires long-term (often - a lifetime) dietary adjustment, especially after reaching an acceptable body weight.

World Health Organization (WHO) declared that obesity has become a global epidemic and poses a serious threat to public health specially children due to the high incidence (almost 100 million children in the world) and an increased risk of large-scale diseases like, diabetes mellitus type 2. According to the Institute of Nutrition, American Academy of Medical Sciences for the past 10 years, the prevalence of obesity among the children of United States has increased from 19 to 23%. Among the factors that significantly increase the risk of symptoms and progression of diabetes mellitus type 2, and WHO experts tied for first place energetically excess food (overeating), leading to obesity.

The normalization of body weight cure diabetes type 2 does not occur, and some children with this type of diabetes, obesity is absent. Consequently, obesity - it is not the cause, but the most important risk factors for diabetes mellitus type 2. This situation is largely due to the fact that both obesity and diabetes type 2 are accompanied by the action of insulin on the level of peripheral tissues (muscle, fat) - their insulin resistance. Stratification of obesity on insulin resistance in familial diabetes mellitus type-2 "runs" the manifestation of diabetes, and further increase the weight of its course. Suffice it to say that the weight loss of 1 kg of obesity increases the life expectancy of children with diabetes type 2 by an average of 3 - 4 months, and in obese non diabetic reducing the risk of 3%.

The cause of obesity is excess nutritional energy intake from food over consumption of energy by the body, i.e., the violation of energy balance. Subject of scientific and pseudo-scientific controversy was the question of what sources of energy (carbohydrates or fats) are more important in the development of obesity. Until the early nineties of the 20th century it was believed that the main influence on the development of obesity has excess consumption of carbohydrates that the body can be transformed into fat and distorts the metabolism, promoting fat storage.

Over the past decade, research in the U.S. has shown that the leading cause of obesity in children is excessive consumption of fats. This is due to the fact that the low volume product with a lot of fat has a ...