Visceral obesity induces chronic disease: pathogenic mechanism - Lex Houdijk

Obesity is the world’s greatest health threat as it causes several chronic diseases. These chronic diseases overwhelm the health and societal care systems up to unprecedented high-cost levels that will soon become unaffordable. Prevention of these diseases is of utmost importance. However, because outcome measures to diagnose obesity and monitor success are wrong, programs have failed thus far. The cause of failure lies in the absence of an understandable pathogenic mechanism of disease development when using classical anthropometric measures of obesity. This void is now filled by the increasing evidence that only part of the accumulated fat, namely visceral fat, dictates chronic disease development. The pathogenic mechanism that underlies the crucial role of visceral fat will be the main topic of the presentation.

A.P.J. Houdijk MD PhD
Laparoscopic gastrointestinal and endocrine surgeon
Scientist
CEO PreventiMed BV