OBESITY AND TYPE 2 DIABETES

Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes

Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes

Introduction

Overview

Obesity, one of the most common problem in the United States, is the term that refers to the existence of excess fat in the human body. Obesity is usually confused with another similar term, 'overweight', but actually both terms have entirely different meanings. Obesity means having excess fat in the body whereas being overweight refers to the existence of heavy bodily organs, which may include bones, mass, blood etc. obesity is more like a disease, unlike being overweight, and it usually influences children during their adolescent years and keeps developing with time until it becomes extremely irreversible. According to most physicians and medical experts, the best way to deal with obesity is to take precautions and maintain a healthy diet as well as exercise to burn off excess fat but in extreme cases, medical therapies and surgeries etc might be required to release the excess fat from the body and reduce obesity from a person's body.

Type 2 Diabetes is another extremely common phenomenon in the United States and is also known as 'non insulin dependent diabetes'. According to the US National Library of Medicine (2012), Type 2 Diabetes is a lifelong disease (chronic in nature) where a person's body is affected by extremely high levels of glucose (sugar) in the blood streams. According to the NCBI, it is the most common form of diabetes that prevails in the USA as well as the rest of the world. In this paper, we discuss the genetic causes that lead to Diabetes Type 2, especially in obese people and the different methods of prevention.

Outline of the paper

Medical experts and doctors have long observed that type 2 diabetes and obesity have a strong connection. This connection exists in the fact that people who are obese are usually carrying type 2 diabetes. In other words, obese people are much more vulnerable to type 2 diabetes. In this paper, we shall discuss the link between type 2 diabetes and Obesity and how they impact health service budgets in advanced countries like the USA, UK and Australia (Osborne, 2012).

Discussion

Brief Statistical Information (So, 2012)

Almost 95% of all diagnosed cases result in Type 2 Diabetes and the remaining 5% result in Type 1 Diabetes. Type 1 diseases are genetic and cannot be prevented whereas Type 2 diabetes forms over time with the inclusion of excess sugar (glucose) in the body. This can be formed due to reasons such as obesity, incorrect medication during other illnesses, pregnancy etc.

Currently, more than 26 million people (only in the United States) have diabetes and according to medical researchers, at least 7 million people in the United States are unaware and undiagnosed of their condition.

One in every ten adults (over the age of 20) suffer from diabetic conditions and in people over the age of 65, every one person out of four has diabetes (type 2).

Since the year 2010, 2 million new cases of diabetes are being diagnosed ...