Obesity in Middle Aged Adults: Prevalence, Effects, and Prevention Strategies

Running head: HEALTH RELATED RESEARCH 1
Health Related research
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HEALTH RELATED RESEARCH 2
Introduction
Obesity is a major problem and contributes to difficulties in prevention and management
of chronic diseases in healthcare globally (Hruby & Hu, 2015). The high obesity cases are
caused by industrialization, urbanization, mechanized transport systems, sedentary lifestyles,
high calorie diets, and transition to consumption of processed foods. Therefore, obesity is a
multifactorial, complex and preventable health condition that affects nearly a third of todays’
global population. It is estimated that if proper prevention measures are not taken, by the year
2030, approximately 20% of the global population will be obese and another 38% will be
overweight (Kelly et al., 2008). Considering the case of the United States, it is projected that by
the year 2030, more than 85% of the people will be obese and overweight (Wang et al., 2008).
Obesity is described as increased body weight for height and is characterized by excess body
adiposity, both in metabolism as well as body size. This condition increases the risks of
morbidities such as disabilities, diabetes, depression and heart disease among others. This clearly
indicates how high the economical and psychosocial costs linked to obesity are, while death
might finally ensue. According to WHO reports, about 61.9% of people aged twenty years in the
United States and Europe have a BMI of more than 25, indicating that they are obese
(Khabazkhoob et al., 2017). However, if proper prevention programs are adopted, then the cases
of obesity based on age and gender can be greatly lowered to achieve a good quality of life.
Therefore, the purpose of this review is to evaluate various articles concerning obesity in middle
aged adults, especially its prevalence, effects and prevention strategies.
Methods
In this review, an extensive literature search from various sources was carried in order to
get top quality article based on this research topic. The following key words were used to create

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various meaningful phrase combinations based on medical subjects. These were: obesity,
prevalence, overweight, lifestyle diseases, randomized controls, informed consent, and middle
age. Moreover, online bibliographic searches were also conducted in various medical databases
such as Medline, Tris, Pubmed and Embase. The literature searches were limited to English
language as long as they included studies on obesity in middle aged adults. Therefore, all articles
that contained one or more of the listed search words on the titles were retrieved for analysis.
The inclusion criteria were the availability of the articles in English, published in peed journals
and randomized clinical trials. On the other hand, the exclusion criteria were any articles
published in a different language other than English, quantitative research, obesity in young
children, and articles published before the year 2005.
Results
Having carried out a detailed review, 15 research articles were retrieved from the
databases used. Out of these reviewed research articles, only four of them were found to meet
the inclusion criteria of being specific about obesity in middle age adults, and were thus
considered for literature review.
Interventions
In a study by Khabazkhoob et al., (2017), the prevalence of overweight and obesity were
determined as well as their associated factors among the middle aged people in Shahroud, in
Iran. In this case, a population based cross sectional study using random cluster sampling method
was carried out. There were 300 clusters which were randomly selected in Shahroud consisting
of people aged between 40 to 64 years old. This study was done between the year 2009 and 2010
and during the initial enrollment process, the study participants had their weight and height taken
on a weighing scale. In this case, obesity was described as whereby the BMI was more than

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30kg/m2. Out of the 6311 people who were selected to participate in this study, only 5190 of
them representing 82.2% participated in the study. The obtained data was expressed as
prevalence in form of percentages at 95 confidence interval. The BMI based on age and gender
for the study participants were indicated that, while 74% were overweight, 31% were obese.
Additionally, being obese and overweight was significantly higher in women with a p< 0.001. it
was also noted that being a female with a higher economic status predisposed an individual to
having a high BMI. Based on age, those people above the age of 54 years were more likely to
have a high BMI as compared to those in the range of 40 to 44 years, with a p<0.001. In this
study, obesity was common in women as compared to men and as WHO reports, it was high in
people from 20 years of age and above, more so those between 40 to 60 years of age. This study
also found out that the high obesity recorded was linked to low inequality such that most groups
in the society were affected in a uniform manner.
Kishi et al., 2014 studied the relationship between the BMI and the effects on the
structure and functions of the left ventricles. This was following the observation that a
longlisting obesity causes heart disease and failure. Therefore, this study evaluated the effects if
obesity on cardiac functions among the young adults and middle aged people. In this study, the
Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults enrolled both White and Black study
participants aged 18-30years of age in the years 1985 to 1986. Out of the 3,498 surviving
participants from an overall of 5,115 recruited people, various tests were conducted to determine
the effects of obesity on cardiac functions. At the twenty-fifth year, the cardiac tests were carried
out in these patients and was accessed by the use of echocardiography and tissue dropper
imaging methods. This change over the course of twenty-five years was split into groups namely:
The low-low, high-low, low-high and eventually high-high. The common covariates measured in