Briefly explain the relationship between obesity and the early development of chronic diseases.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Today, unprecedented numbers of U.S. children are being diagnosed with obesity and serious “adult diseases,” such as type 2 diabetes, that accompany overweight. When type 2 diabetes develops before the age of 20, the incidence of diabetic kidney disease and death in middle age increases dramatically, largely because of the long duration of the disease. For children born in the United States in the year 2000, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes sometime in their lives is estimated to be 30 percent for boys and 40 percent for girls. U.S. children are not alone—rapidly rising rates of obesity threaten the health of an alarming number of children around the globe. Without immediate intervention, millions of children are destined to develop type 2 diabetes and hypertension in childhood followed by cardiovascular disease (CVD) in early adulthood.
Invariably, questions arise as to what extent genetics is involved in disease development. For heart disease and type 2 diabetes, genetics does not appear to play a determining role; that is, a person is not simply destined at birth to develop these diseases. Instead, genetics appears to play a permissive role—the potential is inherited and will develop if given a push by poor health choices such as excessive weight gain, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, and cigarette smoking.
Many experts agree that preventing or treating obesity in childhood will reduce the rate of chronic diseases in adulthood. Without intervention, most obese children become obese adolescents who become obese adults, and being obese exacerbates every chronic disease that adults face. Fatty liver, a condition that correlates directly with BMI, was not even recognized in pediatric research until recently. Today, fatty liver disease has a high prevalence in obese children.