The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control believes obesity is such an epidemic to our state, it created an Obesity Prevention and Control Division.
DHEC says more than half of all Americans are overweight or obese and more than 67 percent of all South Carolinians are in those categories.
To fight the epidemic in our area, Conway Regional Medical Center recruited bariatric surgeon Morris Washington from New Jersey to help those living with obesity.
"It's more prevalent in South Carolina because of the southern diet and lifestyle," says Morris. "The diet here has a lot of fried and rich foods that everyone loves, but these foods are high in calories."
He says because the epidemic is also linked to genetics, it will soon become the number one reason for preventable death in the country - passing smoking.
"We see people that we know eat a tremendous amount of food and are thin as a rail and other people that don't eat that much we see them also gain tremendous amount of weight and excess calories are turned into fat."
Morris also attributes what he describes as a "sedentary lifestyle" to the epidemic.
"We live an automobile lifestyle. We don't walk or ride a bike anywhere. We get food, eat and go to the bank all without having to get out of our cars."
He admits the obesity problem is not just a South Carolina problem, but a problem for the entire nation.
"The United States has the worst obesity problem in the world. That's a problem itself. But it's really focused on the southern states. In the five months I've been working here, I've seen more people in South Carolina that are disabled for obesity than I did while I was in New Jersey."
These disabled patients can't go to work or function as normal people because of their weight.
Jeff Edgart is a clinical lipid specialist. He works on changing the behavior of obese patients.
"It's not just as easy as saying diet and exercise, because not everyone is fit for one specific diet or exercise," says Edgart.
He says people who are overweight often have diabetes and need different diets than other patients.
"There's no one miracle way to do it, or a miracle drug out there because all the drugs do suppress a certain hunger gene. But what happens is that other genes start to take up the slack and start to take over."
What's taking over says Morris is the obesity problem for children. He says our state has the fastest growing rate in the nation for childhood obesity.
"I'm starting surgeries on patients as young as 15 now," says Morris. "Right now, I've got a 15-year-old who is 400 pounds waiting to receive surgery... We're seeing kids diagnosed with type 2 diabetes as young as the age of 8 and 10. Where we never saw that before."
Mississippi has the highest percentage of overweight or obese people in the U.S. at 70 percent.
