‘World Obesity Day’: Professionals call for promoting healthy lifestyle

LAHORE: Health professionals have called for raising awareness about healthy lifestyle and said that obesity can damage mental and physical well-being apart from causing other diseases among the obsess people.

This was stated by President of General Cadre Doctors Association Punjab Dr Masood Sheikh while addressing a seminar in connection with the “World Obesity Day” here at a local hospital.

Talking about this year’s theme- ‘Changing Perspectives: Let’s Talk about Obesity’, Dr Masood said that childhood obesity is expected to increase by 60% over the next decade, reaching 250 million by 2030.

The medical consequences of obesity will cost over $1 trillion by 2025. Individuals are not to blame for their obesity as it is often driven by forces outside of a person’s control, and is the result of complex biological, genetic, and environmental factors.

Dr Masood said, “Our physical and social environments impact our ability to live healthy lives and expose us to unhealthy foods that are engineered to make us eat more. Weight is one indicators of obesity, but treating obesity is about improving overall health, not just about losing weight.”

Dr Muhammad Shahbaz said that physical exercise plays an important role in overall health and can be used in the context of comprehensive weight management interventions and prevention strategies; exercise alone is not an effective obesity treatment.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023