ИСТИНА

An analysis of the BMI distribution among the indigenous northerners of Russia shows a rapid growth in the prevalence of excessive body weight and obesity. In 1987-89 we discovered that in aboriginal communities of Western Siberia, 7-8% of males and 10-20% of females from various ethnic groups aged 18-59 had BMI > 25. In the 1990s, the subjects having BMI > 25 were found among Nganasan, Chukchi, and Eskimo people under 35 years old in 16% of males and 19% of females, and in the age group of 35-49 it was 35 and 52% respectively. In 2000-03, 23% of Khanty and Nenets females in the Yamalo-Nenets AO [Eganyan et al., 2005], and 42% of Nenets females in the Nenets AO [Petrenya et al., 2014] had BMI > 30. The last values are approaching the all-Russia ones: in 2008, 18,6% of males and 32,9% of females over age 20 were obese [WHO, 2013]. In the foreign Arctic, one can see a similar velocity of the obesity spreading. In 1990-2001, 16% of males and 26% of females of the Inuit people of Canada, Greenland and Alaska have been found obese (BMI > 30) [Young et al., 2007], in 2007-08, 27 and 42% [Zienczuk et al., 2012]. Those rates are close to those in white Canadians. The negative manifestations arise rapidly among the children of indigenous northerners. The percentage of rural schoolchildren with BMI beyond the current recommended values went from 9,96% (including obesity - 1,42%) in 1995-97 to 34,84% (obesity - 7,66%) in 2018. At the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, children of the indigenous people of the Kola polar region (the Saami and Komi-Izhems) have excessive weight just as often as the Russian rural and urban coevals from the northern Murmansk and Arkhangelsk districts [Kozlov et al., 2018]. However, the following important inference is worth to mention. According to our data and the materials of a large-scale study in the Canadian Arctic [Young et al., 2007], the increase in BMI and waist circumference invoke slower response, as the rise in the levels of blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides, in the subjects of indigenous northern descent than in the non-Arctic Caucasians. That does not mean that the Arctic aborigines are “insured” against cardiovascular and other metabolic diseases. However, the discovered specificity of northern morpho-functional complexes requires attention and deserves special studies. It may turn to be practical to develop ethnospecific BMI criterions.