Obesity increases a person's risk for gallstone formation, high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as cancers of the breast, endometrium, colon, kidney, and oesophagus. These are some of the reasons why world health officials are putting more money into obesity research and making sure that they get the information that they need to provide us with new ways to battle the new worldwide epidemic that is evolving. Obesity research is crucial in telling us what the root causes of obesity are and how we can tackle it.

Current and past medical research has shown us that obesity isn't entirely due to unhealthy living; it is also influenced by our DNA. People who have had members of their family that have suffered from being overweight or obese will be at a high risk level of suffering the same problems and therefore need to take extra steps to help prevent that from happening.

Although genetics play a part in obesity, research and common sense strongly suggest that unhealthy living- overeating and insufficient exercise - also plays a major part when it comes to obesity. To burn fat we need to burn more than we take in. If we do not exercise then we don't burn fat, therefore inevitably we will end up first overweight, then obese. (You are considered to be obese if you are more than 20 percent over your ideal weight.) Research helps us to know more about the complexities of obesity. Yet, there is so much more for researchers to explore, more time and investment needs to put be into obesity research so we can find more conclusive solutions to battling obesity.

The fact is, even though obesity is on its way to becoming the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., AIDS, another cause of preventable death, receives about 5 times more research funding than obesity.

Obesity causes major health problems and researches have made note that unless the situation is addressed we may face a major worldwide problem due to obesity. It is a major complication in terms of operations as many doctors and consultants will not anaesthetize any one who is grossly overweight as this is extremely unsafe. More important medical problems can't be solved or helped when obesity is a problem.

Continued obesity research is important. In addition, the information we do have needs to be better disseminated - far to many people are grappling with the problem of being overweight and loosing the struggle and turning obese. Research findings should be made available in the form of books, television adverts, leaflets and school topics. An estimated 127 million adults in the United States alone are overweight or obese. Surely we can do better.