OBESITY - 30% rise in hospital admission rates in just one year!

So here’s the bad news. The NHS has released figures this week that show that the number of people admitted to hospital in England for obesity-related reasons rose by more than 30% last year.

Any good news?  Well, NHS statistics also show the increase in obesity rates in adults may be flattening out in recent years. But what the figures don’t show, and it is too early to say, whether obesity rates are likely to decrease.

So what are the figures? The number of bariatric hospital procedures (weight-loss operations) carried out in England rose by 70%, from just over 4,200 in 2008/09 to just over 7,200 in 2009/10.  A staggering 80% of these operations were carried out on women. And this is true pretty well across the board in England although more were carried out in the East Midlands and London than any other regions.

A glimmer of light on the horizon is that the NHS estimates that between 2008 and 2009, the percentage of obese men fell from 24% to 22%, while in women the figure went from 25% to 24%.  But this still means that one in four adults in England is obese. And the health watchdog NICE recently advised that more cases of serious obesity should be treated in hospital putting more burden on the NHS. And this is at a time when hospital admissions topped 10,000 for the first time in the last financial year.

The obvious answer to reducing obesity is to tackle weight control before hospital admission is necessary. Andy Cox clinical hypnotherapist at Assured Effects Hypnotherapy in Poole, Bournemouth, Dorset explained how hypnotherapy can help “Using hypnotherapy we can ask the subconscious to modify your lifestyle without undue stresses or distress. Factors such as old behaviours, feelings and emotions, habits and exercise level can be altered during the hypnotic process.  This is achieved through the use of hypnotherapy and teaching self-hypnosis, so that you can continue to succeed for the rest of your life.  If you know what you should be eating and what exercise you should be taking you don't need to be educated on how you should eat and exercise to lose weight.  Hypnotherapy simply removes the subconscious programming getting in the way of your success”.