Measuring obesity: Fat or fit!

Abstract

Obesity is widely recognized as a major global health challenge because of its strong association with multiple cardiometabolic risk factors including diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. It compromises the quality of life and shortens life expectancy. This minireview discusses firstly the physiological mechanisms involved in energy homeostasis including peptidergic signalling of hunger and satiety from the GI tract mediated by the gut hormones (ghrelin, CCK, PYY, GIP, GLP-1,), and the status of energy stores from the adipose tissue mediated primarily by leptin, secondly, the field methods used in clinical practice to estimate the degree of obesity and lastly, management of the obese patient.

Fat facts: An overview of adipose tissue and lipids

“…There are several field tools for estimating the degree of adiposity including the body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference. [11] Despite its shortcomings, the BMI which is derived from the measurements of body weight and height has so far been the standard anthropometric method used in medical practice. It is easy, inexpensive, and correlates reasonably well with the actual mass of body fat in adults as validated by reference methods used in research such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), whole-body plethysmography, and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.…”