Lifestyle Modification Strategies to Counteract the World Epidemic Growth of Obesity and Diabetes

Obesity and type 2 diabetes are increasing all over the world at an alarming rate due to unhealthy lifestyles. The fight against childhood obesity represents one of the biggest social and health problems all over the world. Diabetes mellitus reduces quality of life and life expectancy and represents a serious economic burden. The correction of unhealthy lifestyles is possible through cost-effective measures and it might prevent about 80% of cases of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes and 40% of cancers. At present, there is a need to advance in the science of delivering health promotion and reproducible multidisciplinary models for the prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes using lifestyle change. Particularly alarming is the childhood obesity which represents the most common metabolic disorder in children and adolescents. Three reasons other than the high prevalence justify the urgency of treating and preventing childhood obesity: (i) per-sistency of childhood obesity into adulthood; (ii) metabolic and nonmetabolic morbidity obesity associated; (iii) higher mortality in adulthood. The American Academy of Pediatrics published guidelines with the targets for prevention and treatment of childhood obesity, based on consistent scientific evidence. Nutrition and physical activity are the main tools of intervention. Recent evidence suggests that prevention should start early, from intrauterine life and infancy, when the sensitivity of the organism to metabolic long-term programming processes is high and the potential impact of the intervention may be considerable. The discouraging results of the impact of available interventions in prevention and treatment of childhood obesity stimulate new emphasis in both clinical and experimental research in the field. The present special issue has been published to enlarge the knowledge in the field of the battle against childhood and adult obesity and type 2 diabetes. Four papers address the issue of childhood obesity prevention and treatment. G. Valerio et al. report that perception of task's difficulty level may reflect an actual difficulty in obese children. These findings have practical implications for approaching physical activity in obese children. In order to design exercise programs that allow safe and successful participation it is relevant to explore both the perception of a task's difficulty level and physical performance of obese children. H. Zheng and coworkers originally looked for possible associations between the metabolome and gender, pubertal development, and physical activity in overweight adolescents, which is an important subject group to approach in the prevention of obesity and lifestyle related diseases. No …