Overweight, obesity and the relationship with university life

Abstract

For students, the change from high school to university requires a process of adaptation, which not only consists of taking responsibility for their studies, but also in having a healthy lifestyle. Overweight and obesity are the result of unhealthy lifestyle habits, risk factors that predispose to the development of chronic degenerative diseases such as systemic arterial hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemias, diseases that constitute some of the main causes of death in Mexico. It is considered that the institution (universities), are an essential part in the prevention of this type of diseases, providing spaces with healthy food, health campaigns, promotion and awareness within its population in order to significantly reduce the number of people with these diseases. Therefore, the aim of this article is to identify the risk factors associated with weight gain in young university students. To this end, a search for scientific documents was carried out in internet search engines such as Google Scholar, PUBMED, TRIP, HONcode and Seach, using the descriptors: Obesity, overweight, university stage, risk factors, documents that accurately reported the aspects that were useful, and which were no more than five years old.