Key ideas on the obesity of the world expert Antonio Vidal Puig

Key ideas on the obesity of the world expert Antonio Vidal Puig

Alejandro told me about an interesting interview published in XL Semanal by the Spanish endocrinologist, world expert in obesity and professor at the University of Cambridge, Antonio Vidal Puig. As it usually happens with this type of short interviews, it leaves us almost more questions than answers, but I wanted to extract some very important lines. Remember that he is one of the doctors who knows most of this:

We still do not know what exactly happened in the last 50 years for this epidemic that has spread around the world to occur. (...) The general conclusion is that there are new environmental factors that act on genomes that predispose to obesity.

(...) try to prevent and / or reverse the obesity epidemic. An objective that today, and despite all the scientific findings, can be considered a failure at the population level. (...) prepare for an epidemic of diseases derived from obesity, which includes type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular and orthopedic pathology ... today's obese children may live less than their parents, suffer more diabetes and heart attacks and end up having knees bionics, if they can be financed. It is urgent to implement a palliative plan B to give the best quality of life to these obese patients until there is a definitive treatment for obesity

(Exercise. Not because it's going to help them lose weight, but because it's going to help them prevent the cardiometabolic complications of obesity. (...) Emphasize the importance of being in shape if you are obese. Another aspect that I would like to highlight are the enormous benefits derived from a moderate and realistic weight loss. The loss of just five percent of the body weight already brings significant benefits in many health parameters.

You have to make people aware, and even some doctors, that obesity is a real disease. That obese patients are neither capricious nor lazy nor people without will. They just have not had luck. The same genes that helped to survive their ancestors for 50,000 years in times of scarcity today are a disadvantage. Somehow, the thin should be considered lucky people, because, for some reason, their genes managed to survive in times of scarcity and now those genes protect them. In any case, the obese patient has no choice but to challenge their genes and maintain a continuous struggle. In that struggle, science and society must provide all possible help.

To consider.