Top Health Risks of Obesity
There is a reason why your doctor tells you to stay away from obesity zone. Basically, Obesity is a serious, chronic disease that has negative effects on your health and a number of systems in your body. Mainly measured by your Body-Mass Index (BMI), Obesity starts when your BMI measures 30Kg/m2 or more (higher the BMI after 30Kg/m2, more severe it gets). According to the studies, the overweight or obese people are more prone to problems like heart disease, Type-2 Diabetes and bone and joint disease. Most commonly, the condition of Obesity is a resultant of the combination of excessive food energy intake, lack of physical activity and genetic susceptibility etc. Some people have tendency of gaining a lot even while eating a little, this is mainly because of their genetically slow metabolism. With its far-ranging negative effects on the health, Obesity is identified as one of the more severe yet common condition in humans. Proper Dieting, increased physical activity and exercising are the main treatments for obesity that we must try and incorporate in our day to day lives.
Top Risks of Obesity on Your Health
1- High Blood Pressure
The problem of High blood pressure is a chronic medical condition which is caused by the hypertension in your arteries. It is due to the presence of additional fat tissue in your body that requires more oxygen and nutrients in order to survive; this ultimately forces your blood vessels (arteries) to carry and circulate more blood to the fat tissue. This condition overloads the normal functioning of your heart muscles, as now they are required to pump more blood (through arteries) at an increased rate. More the blood is required to be pumped, more pressure it puts on your arteries’ walls and hence increasing the blood pressure of your body.
2- Type-2 Diabetes
Diabetes mellitus type 2 is a metabolic disorder that is characterized by high blood sugar and a relative lack of insulin. This disorder usually occurs in adulthood but now-a-days, rare cases of children suffering with type-2 diabetes are also being noticed. Obesity causes resistance to your blood sugar regulating hormone (Insulin). It is due to this resistance that blood sugar levels may become elevated, ultimately leading to diabetes and type-2 diabetes.
3- Sleep Apnea
Sleep Apnea is a respiratory problem associated with obesity. Sleep Apnea basically is caused by heaviness of chest muscles, the added weight on chest muscles forces your lungs to squeeze and results in restricted breathing. This causes sleepless nights, interrupts in sleep and even snoring. Sleep Apnea can affect both children and adults. Also there are many other sub-problems associated with Sleep-apnea, such daytime fatigue, a slower reaction time and vision problems.
4- Cancer
Especially women, who are overweight they get more prone to different types of cancers such as breast cancer, colon cancer, gallbladder cancer, and uterus cancer. While the overweight men are found to be more prone to colon cancer and prostate cancers. This is mainly because of the presence of extra fat tissue that might affect immune system, levels of hormones like insulin, estrogen, regulation of cell division in the body and some proteins like sex hormone-binding globulin that influence certain hormonal usage by the body.
5- Other Cardiovascular Diseases
The increased fat tissue in the body is identified as a major cause of metabolic syndrome, which in turn is a serious risk factor for cardiovascular diseases in human body. The cardiovascular problems are majorly due to the metabolic syndrome, which consist of six major components: abdominal obesity, elevated blood cholesterol, and elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance with or without glucose intolerance, elevation of certain blood components that indicate inflammation, and elevation of certain clotting factors in the blood. In a survey it was found that every third obese person in U.S. exhibits metabolic syndrome.