“Ozempic” generation: obesity rates in our country are rapidly growing

No longer do you need to leave the house to grab your favorite dish from a fancy restaurant or downstairs, fill your fridge or try on the sweater you want to buy, it can be done with just one click. ” “Humanity is becoming increasingly sedentary, diets are higher in calories and habits are worse: more stress and less rest,” says Albert Lecoub, vice-president of the Spanish Society for the Fight against Obesity (Seedo). “Society has led us to a situation in which a significant portion of the factors that predispose to obesity cluster together and contribute to its occurrence. “Years are subtracted from your life,” he says.

Currently, 37.8% of Spaniards are overweight and 22% are obese. The numbers are believed to be higher due to under-diagnosis of the disease. According to the latest annual report of the national health system, the prevalence in both cases is higher in men than in women, and the communities with the highest rates are Andalusia, the region of Murcia and Asturias, and the Canary Islands. It should be noted that in 2000, according to Sido, the obesity rate in Spain was about 14.5%. In almost 25 years they have grown by 51.7%.

With this data, real solutions to the problem are key. The new batch of obesity drugs, which have yet to arrive, “is the perfect tool. Not only because they help reduce weight, but also because they also influence comorbidities: diabetes, cardiovascular risk…,” explains Cristobal Morales from the Endocrinology and Nutrition Service of the Vitas Seville Hospital and the Virgen Macarena University Hospital .

Spain is among the countries in Europe with the highest obesity rates. Public health faces a growing challenge around the world. It is estimated that by 2035, more than half the world’s population will be overweight and one in four will be obese unless prevention and treatment measures improve. Excess fat contributes to numerous non-communicable diseases and is responsible for more than five million deaths worldwide each year, more than half of them in people under the age of 70.

Obesity is a very complex disease because “it cannot be limited to the patient eating a lot and moving little,” Lekoub emphasizes. “There are many reasons that we still don’t know about, and factors that are currently being treated that contribute to why some people have an increased tendency to accumulate fat tissue and therefore develop obesity.” These include diet, physical activity, stress, hours of sleep, some medications, some endocrine diseases, environmental pollutants and genetics.

“There is no disease that doesn’t become more common as you gain weight.” Obesity can affect almost any pathology. The most common are type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, hypertension, cardiovascular and mental illness, and at least thirteen types of cancer. “Every disease you can imagine, you have a greater risk of contracting it if you are obese,” emphasizes the vice president of Seedo.

It is very important to treat the disease from childhood. According to the National Strategic Plan to Reduce Childhood Obesity (2022–2030), 55% of obese boys and girls will be affected by the disease in their teens, and 80% of teens will be so by adulthood.

According to the latest data from the Nutrition, Physical Activity, Child Development and Obesity Study (Aladino), it is now estimated that excess fat affects four out of every 10 children and three out of every 10 adolescents. The number of cases among children is growing faster than among adults and is projected to double by 2035 (relative to 2020 levels). Its prevalence is so high that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it the “epidemic of the 21st century.” COSI Initiative (Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative) data places our country among the EU states with the highest prevalence of childhood obesity and overweight, along with other countries in Southern Europe (Cyprus, Greece and Italy).

Spanish children consume the least daily vegetables in the EU and have the third highest amount of fresh fruit per day, according to a WHO study involving 33 countries and almost 411,000 schoolchildren.

“Treatment is complex because there are many contributing factors,” says Lecoube. Besides diet, activity and good habits, another big help is pharmacological treatment. “In recent years, various useful and increasingly powerful drugs have become available,” the function of which is to reduce hunger.

One of the most revolutionary was the drug Ozempic, a drug for type 2 diabetes that shows good results. They are followed by a long family: Vegobi, Saxenda… “They are safe and effective, but they must be handled by experienced hands. “This is a drug that saves lives,” Morales emphasizes. “That’s why we should only allow it to be prescribed to hospital departments that treat cases of obesity and approach patients on a multidisciplinary basis.”

In more severe cases of obesity, gastric reduction is performed, “but this is not a cure for obesity, just another treatment,” Lekoub explains. “Bariatric surgery is funded, but the waiting lists are very long and only 1% of those who need it are operated on,” says Ana de Hollanda, coordinator of the obesity group at the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN).

Pharmacological treatment is not yet funded, so everything is at the expense of the patient. “They are around 130-150 euros per month,” says Lecoube. “There are many inequalities in obesity, and access to treatment is one of them. Those who can start, others leave it after two or three months… The responsibility to provide for themselves only leads to the fact that they often do not fulfill their obligations.”

Currently, obesity itself is not treated, since it is not considered a disease, but is eliminated when other pathologies appear. It is estimated that failure to take prevention measures results in economic consequences for people and countries that will continue to increase, regardless of economic and geographic context, if current trends continue. This is according to a study on the economic consequences of overweight and obesity, published in BM Global Health.

The World Obesity Atlas 2023, published by the World Obesity Federation, projects that the global economic impact of overweight and obesity will reach $4.32 trillion per year by 2035. This is almost 3% of global GDP, comparable to the impact of Covid-19 in 2020. The most obvious are the direct health care costs associated with treating comorbidities and the indirect costs associated with lost or reduced productivity and human capital.

Although weight shift is difficult to measure, it also has an economic cost. According to the OECD study, the results for Spain are shocking: it means a reduction in life expectancy of the population by 2.6 years, it accounts for 9.7% of health care costs and reduces labor productivity by the equivalent of 479,000 working days per year, which together represents a 2.9% decline in GDP. To cover these costs, each resident of our country pays an average of 265 euros per year in taxes. This analysis shows that for every euro invested in prevention in Spain, six will be returned.