Obesity treatment

摘要

Obesity now affects 15% of the population, and is an underlying factor in many diseases, yet, surprisingly, it has until recently attracted little medical or scientific interest The epidemic of obesity is probably a result of increasingly sedentary lifestyles combined with easy availability of palatable, high fat foods. However, not everyone exposed to this environment becomes obese, and there is good evidence that the tendency to develop obesity is inherited—in the vast majority of cases as a complex polygenic trait, with a few rare cases of extreme obesity being due to single gene defects. Doctors readily accept the need to treat the consequences of obesity, but obesity itself is often ignored because available treatments are considered ineffective or unsafe. Public health measures to prevent obesity are important, but the evidence that even modest weight loss is beneficial, as long as it is maintained, makes a strong case for managing obesity in its own right In this article I review the mechanisms that control body weight and discuss how understanding these may lead to the development of new, effective, and safe treatments for obese people.