View all slides | Contents of this slide

Lecture Notes

So why do we care is people are overweight or obese? Well, you can see here this laundry list of diseases that you are at higher risk for if you are overweight or obese. They include type 2 diabetes, back pain, heart disease, cancer, osteoarthritis, problems sleeping, psychological disorders. So these health risks range a wide variety of influences, and they affect different parts of your body, and so really treating obesity related diseases is not only bad for the individual, but it also costs us billions of dollars (and that's billions with a "b") every year. About ten percent of all healthcare costs are due to treating these health risks for overweight or obese people. So clearly the epidemic has both an individual cost and a societal cost.