Chinese people struggle because of obesity

Dissatisfied with his weight, a year ago Charmaine Tong decided to drink slimming tea - a drink that was supposed to be made from traditional Chinese herbs.

She was happy when she saw her appetite loss and her weight decreased, but the joy suddenly went away, when Tong discovered she had a heart rhythm problem, a month ago.

"I chose to take the Chinese medicine because I thought it didn't contain toxic chemicals and had few side effects, but the result was a heartbeat in my heart," complained Tong, a senior marketing officer in Hong Kong.

She immediately stopped drinking tea and went back to 3.5 kg lost, even more fat than before.

A Chinese baby eating lunch in a weight loss training class.(Photo: Reuters)

The slimming pills and teas advertised as " fat burning " and " rid of excess " were sold in Hong Kong. Up to 30% of the 7 million Hong Kong people are overweight, doubling compared to 10 years ago, local doctors said. In China, it is estimated that 1 in 5 people are overweight, and so there are about 60 million obese people.

"We will have to see many people die early, disabled or heavily burdened with the health system. There will be many people who have heart bypass surgery, treatment after stroke, and many other diseases," said Juliana. Chan, a professor of pharmacology and therapy at the University of Hong Kong, warned.

According to WHO calculations, globally there are currently about 1 billion people who are overweight, of which 300 million are obese. In addition to the causes of overeating, poor exercise, smoking, another reason, according to experts, is that Asian genes are more likely to cause obesity.

"If the same weight is equal, Asians will have more body fat than the Caucasus , " Chan said. "Due to weather conditions, we don't store too much fat, it will move into the liver, muscles, that's why we hear a lot about fatty liver."

The small physique of Asians makes the risk of abdominal fat higher than that of other continents, in other words, Asian fat is more attached to internal organs.

"Asians have problems with belly fat. Excess fat attacks the stomach, attaches to the intestine, infects the liver. If you don't use that fat, it will stick to the skin below the skin, surrounding the heart and muscles , " Chan explained. next. "If the heart muscle is stuffed with fat, it can't store sugar anymore and cause sugar to stay in the blood, causing diabetes."

So is Chinese medicine a solution?"There is no magic solution, no matter what the ad says," said Richard Eu, senior member of Eu Yan Sang, a leading Chinese retailer of Asian medicines.

T. Huyen