‘Emerging obesity epidemic may give rise to heart diseases, deaths in Pakistan’

A large number of people are suffering from an emerging epidemic of obesity in Pakistan and the rising rate of obesity is very common among adults and children. As compared to males, the burden of obesity is higher among females of all age groups.

This was stated by renowned consultant surgeon and health expert Dr Muhammad Jawed from Dr Ziauddin Hospital while addressing a seminar, titled “Bariatrics & Surgical Referrals”, at Qatar Hospital to highlight the problems of obesity and its co-morbidities.

Dr Jawed gave an informative and practical talk about how the problem could be addressed through weight-loss surgeries. The event was chaired by Dr Moiz Ali Motiwala, head of the Medicine Department, Qatar Hospital.

“Obesity is commonly caused by eating too much and moving too little. If you take large amounts of energy, especially fat and sugars but don’t burn off the energy through exercise and physical activity, a large amount of the extra energy will be stored by the body as fat and this is what we called obesity,” Dr Jawed said.

He added that at population level, for controlling and preventing this issue there was a need to take some serious and effective initiative so that it could be controlled. He said obesity did not happen overnight as it developed gradually over time, as a result of poor diet such as eating fast food on a regular basis, eating larger portions of food than you actually need and drinking too many sugary drinks, including soft drinks.

Dr Jawed elaborated that according to the research, obesity was a main cause of non-communicable diseases (NCD) and it could lead to serious cardiovascular morbidity and premature deaths. He said it was a severe public health problem and needed quick awareness.

“We can save ourselves by taking appropriate measures or by bariatric surgery.”  Bariatric surgery is actually a weight loss surgery in which a surgeon removes extra fat from a patient’s stomach with the help of operation and reduces the size of stomach.

Dr Jawed emphasised that patients of obesity had greater chances to get affected by long-term diseases like cancer, heart diseases, kidney diseases and diabetes. People should be encouraged to eat fresh vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains and high-fiber diets.

Eating habits of children and teenagers should be monitored and unhealthy diets should be discouraged, he said, further suggesting that people should take out some time for physical activities and exercise on a daily basis to avoid obesity.