The National Board of Health and Welfare's unit manager Mattias Fredricson says that they see a clear increase in the disease, which concretely means that they have had an imbalance in energy intake for a longer period of time - more energy enters the body than is consumed.
- If you look from the 80s, you see that we have three times more adults with obesity today and five times more children.
Approximately 1.3 million Swedish adults and 80,000 children have the disease today, says Fredricson during Thursday's Morning Studio.
Several reasons
He adds that it is difficult to answer what the increase may be due to, but mentions some components that may be part of the reason:
- It may be that today we have access to more energy-rich food.
We may not move through physical activity as much as before.
But it is a serious illness that has many underlying causes.
Improvements
The National Board of Health and Welfare has been commissioned to develop national guidelines for health and medical care in Sweden in order for care to be more equal and qualitative.
These include skills development and a more structured care of patients with obesity.
- We know that the disease is very underdiagnosed and undertreated, so what we want to develop are mainly three things.
Mattias Fredricson tells in detail what the three different guidelines and recommendations mean in the clip above.