The American Medical Association now defines obesity as a disease.HEFTY STATESThe percentage of residents who classified as obese in 2011 and the percentage who would be obese in 2030 if obesity rate increases continue on their current trajectory:* Alabama 32 percent/ 62.6 percent* Tennessee 29.2 percent/ 63.4 percent* Georgia 28 percent 2030/ 53.6 percent* If states’ obesity rates continue on their current trajectories, the number of new cases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension and arthritis could increase 10 times between 2010 and 2020 –and double again by 2030.Source: Centers for Disease Control; “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2012,” a report from Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Obesity is a disease, the American Medical Association decided this week, and that new label could change the way doctors and insurers handle obese patients, local bariatric experts said.
The new classification could encourage doctors to create serious treatment plans for extremely overweight patients and put pressure on insurance providers to expand bariatric coverage.
“You have another organization of really smart people who are saying this is a disease and we should treat it just like any other disease,” said Chris Sanborn, director of metabolic and bariatric surgery at Erlanger hospital. “It’s the culmination of scientific evidence and people analyzing the evidence, and now we can more easily treat obesity like a disease — because it is one.”
There’s no doubt obesity is a major public health issue in the United States. One-third of American adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2008, medical costs associated with obesity hit $147 billion, the CDC reported. Obesity is linked to dozens of other health problems, like heart disease, diabetes and cancer.