Obesity is recognized by the modern medical community as a global medical, social and economic problem. First of all, this attitude is due to its significant prevalence, the scale of which is comparable to that of the epidemic. Today, this problem concerns not only the adult population: the number of obese and overweight children and adolescents is progressively increasing. More than half of obese adults begin to gain weight in childhood and adolescence. At the same time, the incidence of concomitant pathology in obesity that debuted in childhood is significantly higher than in obesity that developed in older age. Adequate diagnosis of obesity and determination of the type of distribution of adipose tissue is also an important issue. It is known that abdominal obesity has a higher prevalence in the general population. According to the ESSE-RF epidemiological study, the incidence of abdominal obesity, diagnosed by the size of the waist circumference, is significantly higher than the prevalence of obesity determined by the body mass index. The number of persons with abdominal obesity increases with age, both among men and women. The relevance and significance of this issue is largely due to the fact that obesity is one of the main modifiable risk factors for the development of a number of chronic non-communicable diseases, which are the main cause of disability and mortality in the population. They include type 2 diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, coronary artery disease and many others. To solve this problem, the role of not only the medical community, but also the state should significantly increase. Active prevention and timely treatment of obesity will preserve the population’s ability to work, increase life expectancy and reduce the economic costs of health care.

Keywords: overweight, myocardial hypertrophy, type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, atherosclerosis