The Global Impact of Obesity: Biological, Social, and Economic Effects

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of obesity, examining its causes, symptoms, and far-reaching impacts. It begins by defining obesity and highlighting its association with energy imbalances resulting from lifestyle factors such as poor diet and lack of physical activity. The essay then delves into the various symptoms associated with obesity, including increased weight, difficulty losing body fat, and links to serious health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular issues, depression, and sleep apnea. The biological reasons behind obesity are explored, including genetic predispositions, hormonal influences like insulin and leptin, and the impact of environmental factors on appetite regulation and metabolism. Furthermore, the essay discusses the significant impacts of obesity on individuals and society, encompassing health risks, psychosocial effects, and economic costs. Finally, it emphasizes the preventable nature of obesity and highlights the need for intervention strategies, prevention programs, and lifestyle modifications to improve public health outcomes.

Running head: OBESITY
Effects of Obesity
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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The example of a disease that has recently affected the human in this era is obesity. On the
surface of the main cause, the disease is the consumption of calories and less burning of energy
as recently most of the people are lacking physical activity. Thus energy imbalances cause more
of body mass and lead to obesity (van Rossum, 2017). The energy imbalance occurs when the
energy input is not equal to the output energy. Thus recently most of the developed countries
due to lack of exercise and more consumption of unhealthy and high-calorie food cause increase
in fat tissue and obesity. A wide spectrum of fatal diseases like type 2 diabetes, hormonal
imbalance, and even cancer are linked to obesity and increased body mass index.
The symptoms
The symptoms include the increased weight. The loss of body fat gets difficult. Obesity links
directly to increase in a level of HDL and cholesterol in the blood that often leads to stroke. The
other symptoms include depression, diabetes, liver disease, osteoarthritis. The person often faces
breathing disorders, sleep apnea, obstructive disease. The people also face high blood pressure,
high cholesterol levels, joint pain and other medical complications related to psychosocial
problems (Khalife et al, 2014).
The major biological reasons for the outcome
It is already stated that obesity is the common disorder in industrial and developed societies.
There are biological conditions that result in the combination of obesity. The biological factors
are stimulated with environmental factors that likely cause the increase in weight. The biological
factors are related to genetics, biochemistry, neuroanatomy. The impact is the early life growth
of adipose tissue and the endocrine interactions followed with appetite regulation (Ochne et al,
2015). Genetics is the main reason behind the strong effect of obesity. It is already found that the
obese parents have more likely obese offspring. The genes work when the environmental factors

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stimulate. The non-industrialized societies often become obese due to the eating of typical
western diet. The hyper palatable junk foods cause change in the metabolic profile and often
increases lipogenesis and increase body fat. Mostly the processed foods today have the massive
effects on the cause of diabetes (Campbell, 2015). Insulin is another contributing factor towards
the increased cause of diabetes alongside obesity. Insulin resistance especially causes increased
body weight and obesity which is difficult to control. Leptin hormone produced by the adipose
cells that send signal to hypothalamus is crucial for developing obesity. The increased glucose
level found even in adolescents is probably linked due to obesity.
Impacts on human and society
Apart from tobacco, obesity is also producing great harm in U.S. The impacts of health are also
deep and vast for obesity. The psychosocial affects are more depression, low self- esteem, less
employment. The health risks and mortality have also increased with obesity. In economic costs,
obesity is a global crisis (Puhl, Luedicke Grilo, 2014).
The process to do for the betterment of living
It is also known that obesity is highly preventable. Thus for increasing the betterment of lives the
resistance for obesity is the must. This could include the prevention policies and programs that
need to be implemented such that it would make people aware of leading obesity and ways to
modify the lives (Lumeng et al, 2015). They would help in the comparative risk assessment and
make people understand the usefulness of physical activity every day. Since obesity is the
lifestyle based epidemic disease. It would also identify the metabolic risk factors associated with
it. Thus would increase the quality of life by managing everyday conditions that lead to obesity.
There would be instrumental variables approach that can be used to make people more aware.

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Recently researchers have also identified the certain reason behind the cause of obesity and ways
to manage the effects through different interventions.

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References
Campbell, M. K. (2015). Biological, environmental, and social influences on childhood
obesity. Pediatric research, 79(1-2), 205-211.
Khalife, N., Kantomaa, M., Glover, V., Tammelin, T., Laitinen, J., Ebeling, H., ... & Rodriguez,
A. (2014). Childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms are risk factors
for obesity and physical inactivity in adolescence. Journal of the American academy of
child & adolescent psychiatry, 53(4), 425-436.
Lumeng, J. C., Taveras, E. M., Birch, L., & Yanovski, S. Z. (2015). Prevention of obesity in
infancy and early childhood: a National Institutes of Health workshop. JAMA
pediatrics, 169(5), 484-490.
Ochner, C. N., Tsai, A. G., Kushner, R. F., & Wadden, T. A. (2015). Treating obesity seriously:
when recommendations for lifestyle change confront biological adaptations. The Lancet
Diabetes & Endocrinology, 3(4), 232-234.
Puhl, R. M., Luedicke, J., & Grilo, C. M. (2014). Obesity bias in training: attitudes, beliefs, and
observations among advanced trainees in professional health disciplines. Obesity, 22(4),
1008-1015.
van Rossum, E. F. (2017). Obesity and cortisol: New perspectives on an old
theme. Obesity, 25(3), 500-501.