The past decades have seen an alarming increase in life-style diseases, especially obesity in industrialized countries. This essay will present the underlying causes of corpulence and highlight its effects.
Socio-economic factors and unhealthy lifestyle are the two main roots. Due to people being so busy at work that they do not have enough time to have a physically active lifestyle. It has been researched and documented that humans suffer from sitting down and handling tons of work in the office for more than 8 hours per day, which makes them prefer to lead a relaxing lifestyle such as laying on their beds and watching TV as to engaging in a physical activity. Moreover, the act of purchasing fresh food to prepare nutritious meals three times daily seems not to be prioritized over conveniently ordering and consuming cheap fast food or ready-made meals. More severely, people are getting used to consuming more and more of these unhealthy foods on a regular basis because of their availability but also their attractive and friendly product appearance through dramatic development of banners and advertisements. Consequently, the imbalance between energy intake and expenditure leads to corpulence.
Obesity has an adverse impact on both physical well-being and mental health. Overweight people easily get non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers, neurological disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, and digestive disorders, resulting in shortened life spans, as well as decrease in work productivity and quality of life. For instance, obese people can not meet some demands of work quality due to their big shape, heavy weight or even endurance while most jobs require it. On a large scale, these groups of people place an economic and social burden because of a weak labor force and significant national expense for public health service’s. Furthermore, psychological factors such as inconfidence, anxiety and depression give rise to binge eating disorder’s to help people cope and release their stress resulting in unhealthy weight gain and living an unhealthy lifestyle. This is a vicious cycle that can repeat itself if people don’t prioritize their general health.
In conclusion, corpulence is caused by socio-economic pressure and an unwholesome lifestyle and the consequences are mental health disorders and physical health complications in individuals.