Advances in Medicine and Biology. Volume 107

Taffy Makaya, Rebecca Poole and Kavitha Rozario
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medications, such as steroids and antidepressants, may also cause weight gain.
Over the years, there has been a move to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
Children play less outdoors, and spend more time indoors. Recreational
activity is now focused on television, video games and gaming apps – with a
phenomenal increase in ‘screen time’. Changes in societal eating habits are
also an important factor affecting recent trends in obesity. There is a greater
consumption of processed foods, refined sugar and food portions are also
generally larger.
Treating the children who are already overweight and obese remains a
huge challenge. The majority of children who are obese and remain obese by
school-age will become obese adults [19, 20] with a consequent decrease in
life expectancy of anywhere between 5 to 20 years [21-23]. Overweight and
obesity also contribute to significant physical, mental and emotional
morbidities [24], summarised in Table 2, below.

Table 2. Complications of Overweight/Obesity

Physical Psycho‐social

Cardiovascular:

Hypertension

Heart disease

Respiratory:

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

Exacerbation of asthma

Others:

Benign Intracranial

Hypertension

Fatty Liver

Disease/Cholelithiasis

Obesity‐related cancers

Metabolic:

Hyperlipidaemia

Insulin resistance

Type 2 diabetes

Polycystic Ovarian

Syndrome

Orthopaedic:

Slipped Upper Femoral

Epiphysis

Blount disease

Social discrimination

Bullying

Poor self-esteem

Depression

Poor school

attendance

Eating disorders

The cost implications of obesity on health systems cannot be over-
emphasized. In a systematic review by Muller-Riemenschneider et al. (2008),
the authors sought to summarise the cost estimates and compare the costs
attributable to obesity across different European cities. Of 797 publications
meeting their search criteria, 13 studies were felt to be relevant to the review.