All the systems/mechanisms that makeup the human body is essentially vital to our survival and well-being. The human body is comprised of a mechanism that is perfectly designed to aid us in our day-to-day lives. A healthy, strong, functioning human body is self-sustaining and able to efficiently cope/deal with daily obstacles. Our bodies are self-sufficient and complete many processes such as breathing, heartbeat etc., automatically, without our conscious control. However, it is our responsibility to care for and aid our bodies through our behaviors, such as, eating right, exercising, and other healthy behaviors. Despite the obvious misuse of our resources such as consuming fast food and physical inactivity, there are many unseen dangers, which are constantly overlooked to facilitate our lifestyles. One of the most alarming is the increasing lack of sleep which is evidently becoming a norm with the lifestyles we lead. It is important to keep our bodies healthy as a whole, instead of picking and choosing certain aspects and essentially risk factors to our health and improving those. The relative lack of focus on health and shift to unhealthy behaviors has contributed to the increasing worldwide prevalence of both obesity and diabetes. Obesity is of great public health importance, as it has become a worldwide epidemic and is a major cause of comorbidities, including type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and various other health problems that can cause further mortality and morbidity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there will approximately 2.3 billion over weight people age 15 years and older and over 700 million obese people worldwide in 2015. The worldwide prevalence of obesity has nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008 (WHO), rising from 5% for men and 8% for women in 1980 to 10% of men and 14% of women in the world in 2008 (WHO). While the prevalence of diabetes for all age groups worldwide was estimated to be 2.8% in 2000 and 4.4% in 2030. Furthermore, the number of people with diabetes worldwide is estimated to rise from 171 million (2000) to 366 million in 2030 (Wild et al., 2004). Both obesity and diabetes are associated with an increased age-adjusted mortality risk as well as a considerable economic burden (WHO). In Canada, the total medical cost attributable to overweight and obesity has been estimated to be 6.0 billion US dollars (Anis et al., 2009). Similarly, the total economic burden of diabetes in 1998 was estimated to be approximately 5.0 billion dollars (Dawson et al., 1998).
There are a number of risk factors that increase a person’s tendency toward developing both obesity and diabetes. Obesity results from a combination of causes and contributing factors such as genetics, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, smoking, age, socioeconomic factors, and lack of sleep. Obesity itself is a major risk factor in developing type II diabetes, other risk factors also include those listed under obesity such as physical inactivity, genetic predispositions and poor dietary habits, just to name a few. Obesity further complicates the management of type II diabetes by increasing insulin resistance and blood glucose concentrations. The prevalence of childhood obesity alone and obesity-related morbidities is substantially increasing. It is essential for public health to focus on the prevention of obesity and type 2 diabetes as these conditions are progressively increasing worldwide. Although majority of research has been focused on nutrition and physical activity (PA) most published findings have shown that these interventions have not had a significant impact on preventing childhood obesity (Chen et al. 2008). However Chen does note that some interventions that focused on nutrition and PA interventions have had a successful impact on BMI status. Chen et al. suggest that other risk factors that have not received as much attention, such as sleep, may be related to obesity. Sleep similarly to PA and diet plays
