Obesity and Overweight

Obesity and overweight are a condition of increase in the number of fatty cells in the human body. This condition is achieved due to various factors such as eating habits, lack of sleep, medications, etc. Having a high amount of fat is a common condition throughout the world and comes with numerous health implications. Having a high amount of is also associated with genetics. While being overweight is just an excessive fat deposit, obesity is a chronic disease that has major health complications. Health implications such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. Along with that, people also experience mental stress.

Both obesity and overweight are calculated using Body Mass Index where BMI = weight (kg) / [height (m)] ^ 2. After calculating BMI, individuals are categorized into four different categories such as underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese.

• Underweight: BMI<18.5
• Normal weight: BMI 18.5 – 24.9
• Overweight: BMI 25 – 29.9
• Obese: BMI>=30

Health implications and health risks

Obesity and overweight have numerous health implications and risks. Some of them are listed below:

1. Cardiovascular Diseases: Diseases such as heart stroke, attack, high blood pressure, and coronary artery disease. These health hazards are directly linked to excessive fat content in a person’s body. Health implications such as high cholesterol, inflammation, triglycerides, and insulin resistance are contributors to cardiovascular complications.
2. Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a condition in which your body muscles and tissues tend to get resistant toward your insulin hormone. This is caused by the high amount of fat deposited in your body and because of this patients with high blood sugar need to be injected with external insulin.
3. Cancer: Cancer is another health risk that is caused due to excessive fat deposits in the human body. Due to these excessive fats, your body produces a high level of growth hormones. Growth hormones are responsible for cell division and mutation, and this causes rapid division of cells. Cancers such as breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, endometrial cancer, pancreatic cancer, and ovarian cancer are some of the cancers that are caused by obesity and overweight.
4. Respiratory Diseases: Excessive fat is responsible for the decrease in lung capacity to store oxygen, and resistance in air passage. Various respiratory diseases such as sleep apnea, asthma, and hypoventilation syndrome.

Common causes of obesity and overweight

 Both obesity and overweight are a state of excessive fat. This is due to various causes such as diet, physical activity, genetics, environment, and psychological & behavioral factors. Let’s discuss them in brief.

1. Diet: A diet with a high-calorie intake is not good for health and seriously affects overall health.
2. High-Calorie Intake: Foods like fast food, deep-fried snacks, excessive sugar, and processed or canned foods contain high calories. These are high-energy foods. Consuming more fat than what is burnt will leave fat in your body.
3. Low-quality diet: Promotors of fat are carbohydrates, sugar, and fats such as trans-fat and saturated. A low-quality diet can also be a diet that has no fruits, vegetables, proteins, etc.
4. Irregular eating habits: Irregular eating habits have consequences like overweight and obesity. Due to irregular eating habits, overall calorie intake increases. Skipping a meal results in immense hunger, resulting in overeating at the time of the next meal.
5. Lack of Physical Activities: Physical exercise helps your body to convert calories into energy. It also helps increase metabolism.
6. Sedentary Lifestyle: Modern lifestyle has become busy. Long working hours and sitting throughout the day are a trend. People have insufficient physical activity, which reduces calorie burn and results in excessive fat deposits in the body.
7. Lack of Exercise: Due to a tight schedule, individuals are not able to get time for gym, physical activities, walking/jogging, or any recreational activities. This schedule has affected the metabolism of human beings and due to this fat burn has taken a step back.
8. Genetics, and Family: Although genetics does not play a vital role in obesity and overweight, there is a slight chance of it happening.
9. Genetics: Genetics can be ignored while checking for causes of obesity or overweight conditions as genes can never show the full story. It all depends on the activities and food habits of an individual. People might think a person might get overweight or obese by looking at family history and vice versa but this is not always true. Although children adapt to what they are taught or observe, yet still cannot define their body structure.
10. Family Dynamics: Eating habits, patterns, and attitudes of the family towards what they eat and what they do not are driving factors towards calorie intake. Whether they do physical activities such as gym, walking, or jogging is also considered.
11. Sleep: Sleep is a contributing factor in calorie burn. Poor quality of sleep messes up hormones that are responsible for the regulation of appetite.
12. Hormonal Imbalance: Due to lack of sleep or poor quality of sleep, individuals might face hormonal imbalances that help in appetite regulation. Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation can increase hunger resulting in more consumption of food with high-calorie or overeating.
13. Alerted Metabolic Function: Less sleep or poor quality of sleep can affect metabolism negatively, including insulin sensitivity, insulin resistance, and glucose metabolism. This might increase the risk of weight gain around your abdominal area.

Although both overweight and obesity are different, they come with numerous health implications out of which some are severe, and some are chronic. Obesity and overweight are caused by habits such as the consumption of high-calorie diets, low-quality diets, irregular eating patterns, genetics, and lack of physical activities. To maintain a healthy lifestyle, an individual should include best practices such as healthy & timely eating, getting adequate sleep, and physical activities in their daily routine to stay fit and not gain fat. By these practices, a person can mitigate the risk of health problems that come with excess weight and improve overall health.