Be Informed, Live Healthier
It’s More Serious Than You Think
Obesity is a condition in which extra body fat has amassed to the extent that it interferes with a normal way of living due to adverse effect on health. Obesity results in a lower life expectancy and more increased health issues. Your chances of serious illness incease dramatically. The BMI or Body Mass Index is a measurement that matches your weight against your height. You are considered pre-obese or overweight when your BMI falls between 25 and 30. You are obese when your BMI is more than 30. This article will familiarize you with the dangers of obesity.
Health Risks
Obesity increases the possibility of developing various illnesses, specifically heart diseases, breathing difficulties during sleep, type II diabetes, osteoarthritis and certain types of cancer. It is frequently brought on by a combination of excess dietary calories, genetic susceptibility and lack of physical activity. A few instances of illnesses are caused by endocrine disorders, genes, psychiatric illness, and some medications.
Note that there is limited evidence supporting the analysis that some obese people consume little amount of food yet put on extra weight because of slow metabolism. In reality, overweight people use up more energy than thin people because of the energy necessary to keep and carry their increased body mass.
The dangers of obesity lead to many physical and mental conditions. These problems are typically shown in metabolic syndrome and different medical disorders such as high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus type 2, high triglyceride levels, and high blood cholesterol.
Causes
We can say that there are 4 main factors that cause obesity:
Genetics – Obesity tends to run in families that share diet and lifestyle habits that contribute to obesity. Separating these from purely genetic factors is not easy.
Life Style – The lifestyle behavior, equilibrium between calories consumed and physical activity, is key to the illness of morbid obesity.
Psychological – Psychological factors influence eating habits. Many people eat in response to negative emotions such as boredom, sadness, or depression.
Other Illnesses – Some illnesses can lead to obesity or a tendency to gain weight, like hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome and certain neurological problems.
In the United States, more than 12 million people suffer from this condition and from its medical, psychological, social and economic consequences including job loss and higher insurance rates.
Clinically Severe Obesity is typically defined as an excess weight of 45 kilograms (kg) or more, as compared with a person’s Ideal Body Weight (IBW). This is a result of disequilibrium between the calories consumed and the calories burned by a person.
More than 25% above your IBW is linked with an extremely increased risk of health problems, disease, and death.
In 2006, a review named 10 other probable contributors to the continuous increase of obesity cases:
1. Inadequate sleep
2. Environmental pollutants or endocrine disruptors that obstruct the lipid metabolism
3. Lowered variability in ambient room temperature
4. Lowered rates of smoking because smoking is known to suppress appetite
5. Use of medications that cause weight gain
6. Proportional increases in age and ethnic groups that have a propensity to be heavier
7. Late pregnancy, which may result to obesity in children
8. Epigenetic health risk factors passed on to different generations
9. Natural selection for elevated BMI
10. Assortative mating resulting to higher concentration of obesity risk factors
Complications
The complications of obesity are either caused directly by this medical condition or are indirectly associated with sedentary way of living or poor diet. The connection between the dangers of obesity and certain health conditions varies. Type 2 diabetes has the strongest link to obesity. To date, 64% of diabetes in male population and 77% of cases in female population are associated to excess body fat.