Kinshasa, March 6th, 2023, (CPA). – Obesity favours many chronic diseases, said the president of the association of nutritionists and dieticians of the DRC, Mutamba Mpoyo Tapoy, during an interview on Saturday with the CPA, on the sidelines of the World Obesity Day, celebrated on March 4th each year.
« Obesity promotes many chronic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and many other diseases, » said Mutamba, who is also head of division at the General Hospital of Reference in Kinshasa.
« The primary cause of obesity is heredity. That is to say that obese parents have all the chances in the world to have obese children. The second cause is errors in eating habits, which can be explained by the fact that some people spend all day snacking without taking into account the necessary calorie requirements for a man or a woman, » he explained.
« While the dietary needs of the human body require that a woman cannot exceed 2000 kilocalories per day and a man 2800 or 3000 kilocalories per day, failure to respect these required limits causes the body to store excess calories and transform them into fat that can gradually increase a person’s weight, » Mutamba added.
In addition to the two major causes mentioned above, the president of the association of nutritionists and dieticians suggested that hormonal imbalance can cause obesity. A sedentary lifestyle can also cause obesity simply because the body’s needs are not sufficiently met, for example through walking, which releases sufficient energy.
He also recommended that people with obesity problems should pay close attention to their diets. They should consult the nutritionist and dietician in their health area to be oriented according to the pathologies and causes in order to cure their obesity.
As a reminder, obesity is an excess of weight, greater than 20 percent of a person’s ideal weight compared to those of his or her age.
