Why Does Australia Continue To Be One Of The Top 5 Countries With High Obesity Rates For Adults? Essay Sample

Obesity in Australia

Catalogue

Introduction

Q1: Why does Australia continue to be one of the top 5 countries with high obesity rates for adults?

Q2: What are the secondary complications of obesity?

Q3: How Are Overweight and Obesity Treated?

Conclusion

Self Evaluation

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to explore the reasons cause obesity, learning hazards of obesity and identify the strategies. Obesity is a central concept to this report. It can be defined as is classified as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or greater (Obesity Action Coalition 2015)

Climbing obesity rates in Australia than any other place in the world faster, according to a new study. Global study obesity rates, the results published in the medical journal The Lancet, showing the proportion of 63% of the adult population overweight. The degree of obesity in Australia is now on par United States, but slightly less than New Zealand. (ABC 2014)

Figure 1: Percentage of Australia and New Zealand adults either obese or overweight (SBS 2014)

This report will explore the issue by investigating the following three questions:

Why does Australia continue to be one of the top 5 countries with high obesity rates for adults?
What are the secondary complications of obesity?
How Are Overweight and Obesity Treated?

Q1: Why does Australia continue to be one of the top 5 countries with high obesity rates for adults?

Nobody chooses to be overweight or Obesity, the obesity rates for adults became very high. There are serval of factors cause overweight and obesity: environment, industrial food addicts and bad habits.

In fact, our environment encourages overweight and obesity instead of support healthy lifestyle habits. Firstly, lack of neighbors pavement and entertainment equipment can be used to do exercise, not area parks, trails, sidewalks and gyms affordable for people to do physically active. Secondly, because of long working hours and commuting time, people often say they do not have time to do exercise. Also, some people live in neighborhoods that supermarket have no fresh fruits and vegetables (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute 2014). In addition, people live in a harmful food environment, a nutritional wasteland. Cafeteria and vending filled with junk food and sport drinks. Most of people do not even know what they are eating. Fifty percent of the food are eaten outside the home and most of the home-made meals microwave industrial food (Hyman 2014).

Surprisingly, a research report find that New discoveries in science prove that industrial, processed, sugar-, fat-, and salt-laden foodfood that made in plant, rather than grown on a plant, as Michael Pollan would sayis biologically addictive. The scientific findings confirming that food indeed can addictive: Sugar can stimulates the reward centers in humans brain through the neurotransmitter dopamine just like other addictive drugs. Though the PET scans (Brain imagining), scientists find that high-sugar and high-fat foods work similar to heroin, opium, or morphine in humans brain. To make things worse, lower number of dopamine receptors in brains of people who obese and drug addicts shows by PET scans, which making them more likely to crave things that boost dopamine. In the experience, sweets with high fat stimulate the bodys own opioids (chemicals like morphine) released in humans brain, scientist also found that the consumption and preference for sweet can be reduced by drugs that use to block the receptors for heroin and morphine in humans brain, which can cause both normal weight and obese people become high-fat food binge eaters. Therefore, people who developed a tolerance to sugar will need to eat large amount of unhealthy foods even they already now obesity can cause serious social and personal consequences, just like drugs (Hyman 2014).

Most of obese cause by the bad habits in the daily life. Bad habits are easily overlooked by people, however, when the people keeping the bad habits for a long time, it will lead people to obesity unconsciously. Lack of energy balance is the most common reason cause obesity and overweight. Energy balance means that the energy intake close to the energy consumption, thereby maintaining a constant weight. But it does not mean that the daily intake and consumption must be the same, as long as the energy balance within a period of time. Inactive lifestyle also lead to obesity. Many people have little of physically active, one of the reasons is that many people take the time to work in front of the TV or computer, homework and leisure activities. In fact, watching television more than two hours every day can lead to obesity. And the development of transport also reduces peoples physical activity, which means that the energy intake from foods and drinks is not being used, it is leading to obesity (NIT 2014).

Overall, the environment that people live impact their lifestyle, they cannot chose what they eat, it looks like the environment filled with junk food and high-sugar drinks more support obesity. And because that, industrial food addiction risk in such an environment is prone and difficult to detect, some of reason also responsible to peoples bad habits. All of those factors add up together make more high risk of obesity.

Q2: What are the secondary complications of obesity?

Obesity is a complex issue because there are a number of secondary complications which will affect people with this disease. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013) 62.8% of Australian adults are now overweight or obese, with this figure increasing over the past two decades (up from 56.3% in 1995). The National Health Measure Survey revealed that when people who were considered overweight or obese were tested for chronic diseases they had abnormal test results (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013). Obesity leads to a variety of serious health issues but in particular diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Firstly, the biggest health issue for obese patients is type 2 diabetes. It looks like people who were obese were more likely to be at high risk of diabetes. Compared with the percentage of people who were normal weight or underweight likely to have diabetes, which was 1%, overweigh population who did not have diabetes were at high risk of the condition, about 5.8%. According to the National Health Measure Survey (NHMS), around one in every twenty Australians adult has diabetes. In fact, 4.2% people who with known diabetes and 0.9% of people who was diagnosed with diabetes, all of those 5.1% of people even dont know they had the condition. To make matters waster, 3.1% of adults who did not get the diabetes have a high risk of having the condition in the future. Obviously, overweight is known as a risk factor can interfere with the bodys production of and resistance to insulin. ( )In addition, having diabetes causes other problems for sufferers namely foot complications, high blood pressure, kidney disease eye complications, skin problems ex and others. (American Diabetes Association 2015)

Secondly, obese people risk having cardiovascular disease. One of the main causes of death worldwide is cardiovascular disease which can be angina, blocked arteries of the heart and heart attacks. In 2011, heart disease was the chief cause of death in Australia, 14.6% of people died as a result (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013). It is now recognized that if you have a big belly, this fat affects you because the fat is visceral fat and releases immune system chemicals, hormones and other substances that disrupt processes in the body (Johnson 2013). As a person gets fatter, your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and hypertension rises steeply. There is evidence to prove that after 45 years old, the risk of cardiovascular disease can increase. However, a number of adults who was under 45 years old also had the indicators of cardiovascular, especially those obese people. Cardiovascular disease can lead to premature death.

In conclusion, obese people lose not only the beauty, the action slow cumbersome, but also likely to cause many diseases. Excess fat cells in the pancreas damage, it loses the ability to secrete insulin, leading to diabetes. At the same time, excess fat causes stress on the heart, as well as damage to the blood vessels leading to the internal environment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. The disease causes the premature death of obese people, resulting in a series of personal and social problems.

Q3: How Are Overweight and Obesity Treated?

According to a research from Holman (n.d) who study in school of Population Health The University of Western Australia, the total numbers of deaths in men and women who caused by overweight or obesity by age under each scenario from 2011 to 2050 showed by the two tables below. In Scenario 1 by not intervening and allowing the present trends to continue it is clear that there is a steady increase in the number of deaths from obesity related diseases. Compared to Scenario 2 which is the present tend which is to start measures to decrease the number of obese adults. The amount of deaths predicted by 2050 has a dramatic decline to 604.315 instead of 898.259.

Table 1: Total deaths caused by overweight/obesity by age for each scenario (2011-2050): Males

Source: Cut the Waist 2009-2011

Table 2: Total deaths caused by overweight/obesity by age for each scenario (2011-2050): Females

Source: Cut the Waist 2009-2011

The data on the table shows that take measures to control obesity largely reduce the number of deaths caused by obesity, therefore, taking measures to treat overweight and obesity is necessary. in fact, there are many methods can treat obesity as long as people continue to lose weight, there are serval of methods can help people go over the obesity, including surgery, change lifestyle, change the environment around.

First of all, people have a very important environmental impact, changing the surrounding environment is very useful. For example, go for a walk or dancing in the living room instead of watching TV, leaving the office and have a walk after drinking a cup, do some physical exercise on the road to and after the work, put a note on your calendar to remind yourself to take a walk or go to your exercise class (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute 2012). The Government also needs to take on the responsibility of people living environment. Subsidies for the production of fruits and vegetables instead of soybeans and corn, which created a lot of junk food. Encourage open supermarkets in poor areas, thus providing more food choices, rather than letting the poor can only choose cheap junk food. Ban food marketing to children. Improve the school cafeteria food, campus environment need better food and education to promote our children from obesity. Establishment of community health stations, so that can support people have the choice of better food (Hyman 2014).

Secondly, adjust the bad habits to achieve the goals of lose fat. First, the change in eating habits. Develop a healthy eating plan, do not eat the food including non-edible fatty acids, trans fats, cholesterol, salt and added sugars. Edible fat-free or low-fat dairy products, protein foods, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Furthermore, doing enough physical activity, it can help you lose weight and maintain weight, physical activity can also help reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, strengthen your heart and help your lungs work better, strengthen muscles, let the joints in good condition. In addition, maintain the good habits, maintaining a good diet and lifestyle can be challenging, but it is also very important to maintain a normal body weight (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute 2012).

Finally, people whose life threat by obese, surgery is the fastest way but the last way to use to lose weight. most of the surgery have a certain risk of death and terrible consequences. Surgery only use on people who is extreme obesity (BMI bigger than 40) and fail to lose weight. People who threat to life by obesity like sever sleep apnea, Obesity-related cardiomyopathy or severe type 2 diabetes also can choose surgery to lose weight (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute 2012).

To sum up, In a sense, the treatment of obesity depends more on one’s own, modern technology offers many ways to lose weight, people can change their immediate environment and to develop good habits to achieve the purpose of weight control. Modern medicine also those who are obese life threatening provides solutions for short, obesity is not terrible.

Conclusion

Research shows that obesity rates increased significantly in the past three decades. This may be due to a variety of reasons, including environmental, lifestyle, and food addiction industrial impact.

The main conclusions can be drawn from the study is that obesity seriously affect the health of individuals, obese people are more likely to develop diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which can cause cancer and premature dead end. And triggered a series of personal and social problems.

It is strongly recommended to change the bad living conditions, try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, a balanced diet, and more sports activities. Try to keep a balanced diet as long as enough. When life threated by obesity, people can have surgery to save lives, and use the effect of surgery to achieve the goal that out of obesity.

Self Evaluation

Research

For the research, the articles of sources help me to create the order and the question of the topic, from the source I found, I try to put the useful content into the research question. For example, the environment of food can be put in the question what course obese? By using this way, I can find that what research question was more suitable for me. However, there are thousands of sources, it was impossible to read though all of them. Compare most of sources, the e-book from library should be the most useful one, it provide most of base information, however, it also has an obvious disadvantage, most of information in those e-book are from other academic articles, that means when I want to use the information in the e-book, I have to find the reference of those information which I used from the e-book. Also, the internet sources also useful and important, many of details about the topic in the e-book may not enough to write a research report, which means most of details and issue are from internet, but before I discover the things I need, I have to read though lots of articles. In fact, the report also have interesting part, the first question of my research report was the most interesting area. As we can see, obesity and over weight is a normal problem in the world, when I was researching the facts which course obesity and overweight, I also learned that the cause of obesity. Most importantly, after understanding those reasons, although I am not over weight, I can take care of those factors and prevent myself from the overweight, and I also can help the people around me to avoid the obesity.

Oral Presentation Skills

Since Unit 1, I try to improve my self-confidence, I know when I am on stage, I get nervous, even forget the wards, so I had trying to overcome fear and lack of confidence when I stood on the stage of. Of course, I also have tried to raise the volume when I was giving a speech, because many friends and even my parents said me speak very quietly, so I was tried to improve my volume when doing the presentation. So, I think I did very well this time.

Organisation

I think at the start of doing the research report, I planed the questions and the time very well. However, looking for useful sources for me is not easy, I found that is difficult to find the articles I want in the search engine if I did not type the right words. And some of source used professional academic words and it was hard to paraphrasing, which always cost me lots of time to put it in my own words. The works like organise the report also used me lots of time, Ill need to improve those skills. Therefore, the useful strategies I would like to recommend to future students are: For every single question, finish the in-text and the reference list during using the information from articles, finish this would let you do not need to come back to find the source from thousands of articles. In addition, do not rush down to paraphrasing the sentences you already plan to use in your report, organize the context and the order first so you do not need to come back again and do organisation.

In this task, the most rewarding and challenging components was paraphrasing and researching, with teachers help, I learned how to search and locate the information I need. And because of the academic words, I used several of ways to paraphrasing the sentences from the articles, it improved my paraphrasing skills.

Areas for Improvement

Next time when I need to do my research, I will finish the frame of my report first, and finish the in-text and reference list during paraphrasing after organizing the order of my report, these is also the recommendations I would suggest to the future Unit 2 students.