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Obesity in East Asia

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Metabolic Syndrome

Abstract

The prevalence of obesity has been dramatically increased for the last three decades worldwide.

Since there is a difference in defining obesity, especially in abdominal obesity, direct comparison of the obesity prevalence may not be appropriate between Asian countries and others. However, based on data for the recent two decades, obesity epidemic is also observed in the countries in East Asia in parallel with marked environmental and lifestyle changes. This review focuses on the recent trends of general and abdominal obesity in East Asian countries including China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

In addition to data for obesity epidemic, a large body of evidence on the “metabolically obese” phenotype in a normal weight population has been reported in the population in east countries. This phenotype is important in the public health perspective, because normal weight individuals with metabolic obesity may have obesity-related morbidities as well, especially in an Asian population who are more liable to increased visceral fat and insulin resistance than any other race or ethnicity with the same level of body mass index. In the other way, “healthy obesity” in an obese population has been proposed, based on the fact that not all obese individuals are uniformly affected with cardio-metabolic abnormalities; however, this may not be the case in East Asian population.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Yong-Moon Mark Park & Junxiu Liu

  2. Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    Yong-Moon Mark Park

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  1. Yong-Moon Mark Park
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Correspondence to Yong-Moon Mark Park .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Rexford S. Ahima

  2. Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Rexford S. Ahima

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Park, YM.M., Liu, J. (2016). Obesity in East Asia. In: Ahima, R.S. (eds) Metabolic Syndrome. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11251-0_8

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