«For the first time there are boys with diabetes linked to obesity»
The best Polish university grants an honorary doctorate to the professor, European reference in endocrinology
Galician Research Award;National Award King Jaime I of Clinical Medicine, the most important in Spain and whose jury is part of 19 Nobschers;International Prize for Neuroendocrinology Geofrey Harris ... The Professor of Medicine at the University of Santiago and head of the Endocrinology and Nutrition Service of Chus, Felipe Casanueva Freijoo, the recognitions accumulate, although since yesterday he adds a new one: the Honoris Causa doctorateFor the Polish University of Lodz, the most prestigious in the country.The director of the National Center for Network of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBEROBN) also takes the distinctions with humor."I am becoming old and that is why they all give them to me," he jokes from Poland, although the tone of his conversation changes when he refers to what he considers the greatest threat to world public health: the obesity epidemic linked to diabetes.
-A Galician researcher Honoris Causa in Poland.How has it been possible?
-I have more than ten years collaborating with the University of Lodz and we work in the creation of the Federation and European Endocrinology Association.We develop a training program for the incorporation of Poland into the international scientific community.Apart from assessing my scientific merits, they have taken into account the help we have given them for Poland to enter the international biomedical arena.
-As recognized expert in obesity and diabetes, is it really, as it is said, obesity the great sanitary epidemic of this century?
-The problem is very worrying and neither society nor politicians are sufficiently sensitized.Obesity linked to diabetes is now the biggest health problem facing humanity.
-Han they have already jumped the alarms?
-In childhood obesity, which already reaches 17% of the population, something that was unthinkable until not long ago.For the first time in history we are observing in adolescents cases of type 2 diabetes, which is the one associated with obesity.It is an enormously worrying situation for the health system and for which no politician has bothered to worry.
-The controversy over the subject of Physical Education has not helped either.
-The law that was discussed in Galicia was about the need to eliminate an hour of gymnastics, when in reality it would be necessary to introduce another at least.The real problem is that in schools there is no regulated program of physical exercise, when it is very necessary.The problem is that if we do not give them hours of gymnastics, we will have children with such a degraded health that they will not be able to use the hours of mathematics or physics that we give them more.Politicians should also draw laws that force a minimum of physical exercise and that make the subject not a Mary, but something regulated.They would also be necessary to have advisors who support obese children.
-What will, then, the scenario if measures are not taken?
-What in the future we will have a generation of obese and diabetics that will be full of cardiovascular diseases with 50 years.There will be 50 -year generations that will have been obese for 40.
