Chula lecturers warn of dangers of obesity

According to the medical lecturers, obesity significantly raises the risks of dangerous diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke, hyperlipidaemia, osteoporosis, and sleep apnoea.
“The health risks increase once the body mass index [BMI] climbs above 30,” Associate Professor Weerapan Khovidhunkit said at a seminar yesterday.
He said most people with a BMI above 35 had more than one chronic disease. A person’s BMI is his weight divided by the square of his height.
Associate Professor Suthep Udomsawaengsup said surgeries conducted to reduce the weight of obese patients showed that 82 per cent of them fully recovered from diabetes.
“This fact confirms how dangerous obesity is,” he said.
Chulalongkorn University has performed surgeries on 100 obese patients to date. On average, the patients weighed about 136 kilograms before surgery. All of them developed health complications.
After the surgery, these patients lost about 50kg each.
“Obesity had adversely affected my life in all aspects,” Attapong Daengkhamkhoon said. He is one of the obese patients undergoing surgery.
Now, he is controlling his diet and exercising to avoid gaining too much weight again.