What is Obesity?

Published by weightlossguru | Filed under Fight Obesity, Weight Loss Guide

Most people think that obesity goes no deeper than a less than fashionable look, but they are wrong. Obesity today is more of an epidemic, a disease spreading fast across both the industrialized world, emerging economies and even third world countries like India and The Philippines.

Obesity means having too much fat on your body. First and foremost, obesity puts a strain on joints and bones that have to sustain more weight than before, which leads to arthritis in the long run. The weight also tends to make people less active, which, in turn, means more weight is put on.

It is a condition in which the natural energy reserve, stored in the fatty tissue of humans and other mammals, is increased to a point where it is associated with certain health conditions or increased mortality.

Although obesity is an individual clinical condition, it is increasingly viewed as a serious and growing public health problem: excessive body weight has been shown to predispose to various diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2, sleep apnea and osteoarthritis.

The lack of metabolic activity and high cholesterol diet brought by eating too much of the wrong kind of food impair the proper functioning of your heart and blood vessels. This results in high blood pressure, stroke and other blood and heart conditions. Excess weight also leads to sleep apnea, the cessation of breathing during sleep.

However, obesity can be cured with patience and effort. As this diseases spreads all over the world, so do the efforts for curing it increase. Talk to your physician or weight loss specialists if you are interested in getting rid of obesity.

Recognizing obesity?

The textbook definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or above. The body mass index is a measure of a person’s weight scaled according to height, as developed by Belgian scientist Adolphe Quetelet in 1840. This index serves to show the amount of fat stored on the body, and the higher your BMI is, the worst is your exposure to certain diseases.

Physicians also warm that having a lot of fat stored around your waist increases the risk of developing diseases. Going beyond size 35 in women and size 40 in men means only trouble in the future.

Obesity and its Risk factors

The presence of risk factors and diseases associated with obesity are also used to establish a clinical diagnosis. Coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and sleep apnea are possible life-threatening risk factors that would indicate clinical treatment of obesity. Smoking, hypertension, age and family history are other risk factors that may indicate treatment

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