[The overweight and underweight girl: from findings to prevention]

Both preponderance as well as underweight normally starts in childhood and puberty and hurt the fate of young women mostly a life long. Weight and fat tissue as an energy storage regulates through the hormone Leptin appetite, food intake and therefore the energy reserves. With this hormone exist a common pathophysiological regulation unit, which causes in case of preponderance an increased, in case of underweight a decreased cyclus activity. Besides short term influences (like the development of the PCO-syndrome and/or fatigue fractures) the long-term consequences especially the accumulation of the visceral fat, the cardio-vascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, type-II-diabetes, mammary- and endometrial carcinoma play a special role. On the other hand chronic underweight very frequently leads through chronic estrogen defect to osteopenia, osteoporosis and therefore to cyclus disturbances, sterility and osteoporosis. A simple finding like weight, has thus an important predictive quality for later illnesses and their prevention.