Psychology: Extreme Obesity Ballooning In U.S. Adults

WCCO.COM ^ | Oct 13, 2003 3:00 pm US/Central | 2003 The Associated Press.

[GirlyGirl2003]

http://wcco.com

Extreme Obesity Ballooning In U.S. Adults

Oct 13, 2003 3:00 pm US/Central

Americans are not just getting fatter, they are ballooning to extremely obese proportions at an alarming rate.

The number of extremely obese American adults - those who are at least 100 pounds overweight - has quadrupled since the 1980s to about 4 million. That works out to about 1 in every 50 adults.

Extreme obesity once was thought to be a rare, distinct condition whose prevalence remained relatively steady over time. The new study contradicts that thinking and suggests that it is at least partly due to the same kinds of behavior - overeating and under-activity - that have contributed to the epidemic number of Americans with less severe weight problems.

In fact, the findings by a RAND Corp. researcher show that the number of extremely obese adults has surged twice as fast as the number of less severely obese adults.

On the scale of obesity, "as the whole population shifts to the right, the extreme categories grow the fastest," said RAND economist Roland Sturm. He added: "These people have the highest health care costs."

Sturm said health problems associated with obesity - including diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and arthritis - probably affect the extremely obese disproportionately and at young ages.

Sturm analyzed annual telephone surveys conducted nationwide by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His report covers surveys from 1986 through 2000. The findings appear in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

In 1986, 1 in 200 adults reported height and weight measurements reflecting extreme obesity, or a body-mass index of at least 40. By 2000 that had jumped to 1 in 50, Sturm found.

The prevalence of the most extreme obesity - people with a BMI of at least 50 - grew fivefold from 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 400, Sturm said.

By contrast, ordinary obesity - a BMI of 30 to 35 - doubled, from about 1 in 10 to 1 in 5, based on the same surveys.

Body-mass index is a ratio of height to weight.

Americans tend to understate their weight, and a recent study based on actual measurements found an obesity rate of nearly 1 in 3, or almost 59 million people. Sturm said his findings probably understate the problem for the same reason.

The average man with a BMI of 40 in Sturm's study was 5-foot-10 and 300 pounds, while the average woman was 5-foot-4 and 250 pounds.

Dr. Mary Vernon, a trustee of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians, said the study reflects what doctors who specialize in treating obesity are seeing in their offices. Vernon said the number of her patients weighing 300 to 350 pounds or so has doubled in the past several years.

She said thinking has evolved from a generation ago, when many doctors believed extreme obesity was due to hormonal abnormalities or other distinct conditions.

Now many believe it is a combination of lifestyle factors and genetics, as well as a propensity for some people's bodies to be hyper-efficient at storing calories. This tendency would benefit people in societies where starvation is rampant but is a huge problem in developed countries where food is plentiful and lifestyles are increasingly sedentary, Vernon said.

Vernon said the biggest challenge in treating severely obese people, who typically have tried mightily to lose weight, "is giving them enough hope that it's worth trying again."

(© 2003 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )

[GirlyGirl2003]

America is the best place on earth, but we are suffering as a society from many emotional, and psychological problems brought about by social / societal change.

Broken families are not change. They are the result of changes in many aspects of our society. The greatest change agent is the loss of common values.

Families stayed together much more often only a few decades ago. The values of that time supported families staying together rather than divorcing.

Many homes today are broken. This social shift has brought about massive change throughout the fabric of American society.

Changes in our values has allowed society to become corrupted to a far greater extent than in times past, and these changes, along with wars, tremndous economic uncertainty due to the loss of jobs for many reasons, one in ten Americans being foreign born, has caused another kind of change in Americans: we are unhappy.

Yes, we live in the best country ever created, but we are taxed and regulated to death. Families are very mobile because of work requirements, or because the demographics of a neighbor suddenly changed making it difficult to establish long term friendships we've heard our parents talk about.

We are unhappy, latch-key kids from broken homes living in rapidly shifting urban, or suburban neighborhoods where we are afraid to get to know the neighbors in our hood.

We are unhappy because of the trends in society do not foretell of better things to come in America. And, because we are unhappy, and suffer from so many emotional prblems, we seek satisfaction in the few things we can control, and one of those things is food.

[xrp]

6'1" and 185 pounds. My diet isn't perfect but I workout 3-5 days a week (Usually 5) and I'm in very good shape.

Any single female FReepers out there? ;-)

[Support Free Republic]

A Recall AND a Fundraiser? I'm toast.

Let's get this over with FAST. Please contribute!

[TopQuark]

Excellent, just excellent analysis! We'll never read it in the press, but that's what it is all about.

Incidentally, but relatedly, suicide is the seventh largest cause of death in America.

[per loin]

Fat is what happens when people give up that civilizing drug, tobacco.

[Schatze]

Here's something even more depressing. I read last week that an estimated one in three Americans born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes at some point in their lives.
Diabetes kills more people than AIDS and breast cancer combined.

[Orangedog]

Extreme Obesity Ballooning In U.S. Adults

Gee, there's a news flash. These guys could have just gone to any super market in Ohio and saved themselves a lot of research money to figure that out.

[not_apathetic_anymore]

Yes, overeating and under activity are part of the equation. But what I never see mentioned in these articles is that this epidemic started when they started pushing the food pyramid with all of those servings of grain. I'm not believing it's a coincidence.

[mplsconservative]

"On the scale of obesity, "as the whole population shifts to the right, the extreme categories grow the fastest," said RAND economist Roland."

Oh it's the population shift to the right. Yup, Bush's fault.

[Chu Gary]

"We are unhappy because of the trends in society do not foretell of better things to come in America.."

I live part time in Asia, so I travel frequently, passing thru a lot of countries. The trends in society in many other countries are similar to those in the U.S., yet you will not see the frequency of morbidly obese people in any other country that I've encountered - this problem is mostly unique to the U.S. A friend of mine is Austrian but lives and works in the U.S. He said to his wife sometime recently that if she sees 10 morbidly obese people while they are in Europe, he would bet her that at least 9 out of 10 were from the U.S. - he was right, except it was 10 out of 10.

[GirlyGirl2003]

Thank you, Quark.