Obesity

ObesityDone by : Mohammed A Qazzaz

All of us love to have a well-built bodies, or at least not to be obese, and we have the right to think like that, because obesity is not just a cosmetic concern, it's also a risk for some health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes and the high blood pressure and others.

Obesity

I am sorry it looks dangerous but don’t panic, you can prevent your health problems easily, and you can lose weight through change the life and dietary style, increase physical activity and others.

What is Obesity?

Obesity is that, you have a high amount of fat in your body, and from that definition you can notice that, obesity is not about more weight, it's about more fat . To understand this you may weight more because you are tall. And this is normal.

Now you want to know if you are obese or not, and this is easy, all you want is to measure your weight in Kilograms (kg) and your height in meters (m), and then use this formula

Or you can use this one too

This formula will give you your body mass index (BMI). the obesity is diagnosed when the (BMI) is 30 or more. now look to this table below to know more about the (BMI).

BMI Result

Less than 18.5 Underweight

18.8-24.9 Normal 25-29.9 Overweight30-40 Obese

More than 40 very obese

Now with the (BMI) you can diagnose yourself as an obese or not, but still one problem. Some people like the muscular athletes find their (BMI) higher than normal, when they most likely have a normal amounts of fat in their bodies, and the answer is that, they weight more not because of fat, but because of muscles.

What are the causes of obesity ?

Our daily bodies activities need energy come from food we eat, and more exercise and activities burn more calories that we get from food. And not just the activities need to burn calories, also many metabolic reactions in the body need the energy from food, such as to warm up in cold weather and to sweat in the hot days. But when our food calories amounts exceed the body need, they will be stored in the body as fat.

•Inactivity: without activity you don’t burn as much calories. and you need to have more exercise to burn the excessive calories.

So the causes of obesity is a combination of states and risk factors that work together to store more fat in our bodies, and these factors include:

•Diets: some bad eating habits like high calories diets epically in the night, or skipping a healthy breakfast, and replace it by junk fast food, all of that increase the body fat .

•Pregnancy: some women after the baby is born have an increasing in their weight, and if they don’t lose that weight, with many pregnancies after that, they may become obese.

•Lack of sleep: this cause disturbances in the body hormones, and increase the appetite. you also may crave to height calories food.

•Drugs: some medications lead the body to gain more weight, these drugs include, diabetes medications, steroids and beta blockers, anti-seizure medications, antipsychotic medications and antidepressants drugs.

•Medical conditions: some diseases and syndromes lead the body to store more fat and gain weight like Cushing syndrome. some disease low the metabolic rate in the body and low the amount of burned calories every day such as the hypothyroidism. And some diseases lead the patient to low his activity, such as the arthritis or maybe the patients with paraplegia

•Genetics: genes affect the amount of body fat we store and where to store,

•Family lifestyle: not because of the genes we find the obesity runs in the families, it also because of their life style and the food they eat. We can notice that some countries such as USA, have more obese people than others countries like Japan and this is because the culture and the life style.

•Age: obesity could occur at any age, but when we get age we lose more amount of muscles built. more amount of muscles give higher rate of metabolism and calories burning. When we lose them we reduce the calories burning and tend to fill the body with fat.

What are the complications of obesity? Now is obesity dangerous, the answer is yes, and if you are obese you are at risk to have one or more of a great number of obesity health problems. including: •Type 2 diabetes.•High blood pressure.•Stroke.•Heart disease.•Gallbladder disease.•Osteoarthritis.•poor wound healing.•Sleep apnea,( dangerous sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts).•High cholesterol and triglycerides.•Metabolic syndrome.•Cancer.•Depression.

And many other conditions, moreover the quality of life may be lower, and may be you can't do everything you want and like as easily as you would like, you can't join some family activities or you may feel some shame or depressed.

And this is a list of some weight-related states:Depression.

Sexual problems.

Social isolation.

Physical disability.

Discomfort.

Yes, you must go to the doctor asking for help. It's important to talk to your doctor honestly about yourself, your health, your diets and your life style, because that is very helpful to improve your health. So when you go to a doctor write down some questions to ask.

Do you need to go to the

doctor?

These questions about why you can't control your weight and how you can do that. Ask about if you should see a dietitian, ask about treatment options for obesity and for its complications, ask about surgery and you may ask him about what websites are useful for you to read more about your health.

The doctor can't answer most of your question else he ask you some questions and a after examining your other health conditions. so the doctor will start his management with the following tips:

Taking your obesity history: the doctor have a lot of questions about your life style, your weight, when you noticed it, how long you have been obese, what factors make you obese, what diet you eat typically, how your daily activities are, do you smoke or drink, do you think the stress affect your weight, what medication do you take. And he will ask you about your family, if there is any one have the same condition,

Physical examinations for your expected heath problem: the doctor first will start to examine your general physical conditions and your vital signs including, the blood pressure, the temperature, the heart rate and heart sound, the lungs and the breathing sounds, and examination for your abdomen. After that we will ask you to have some blood test to look for the complications of the obesity.

(BMI): of course the doctor will calculate your body mass index.

Blood tests: the blood test he will ask to have include the cholesterol test, fasting glucose, liver function test ,and thyroid tests.

the healthy weight is the main goal for obesity treatment. and you can reach that by making a good treatment plan with your doctor and may be a big team of nutritionist, dietitian, obesity specialist and nurse.

This plan include:

Dietary changes.

Exercise and activity.

Behavior change.

Prescription medication.

Weight-loss surgery.

Treatment

The Prescription medication. Include:

Orlistat (Xenical).

Lorcaserin (Belviq).

Phentermine-topiramate (Qsymia).

Phentermine (Adipex-P, Suprenza).

The prevention is always better than the treatment, and if you feel currently overweight or your body mass index exceed 30, you need to start your prevention program.

More exercise: 150 to 250 minutes of moderate intensity activity every week is helpful to keep you away from obesity, and these activities such as fast walking and swimming.

Eat healthy: low calorie and fibers rich food such as fruits, vegetables are good food to have every day, but saturated fats and sweets and alcohol are extremely bad , they increase your body weight, and threaten your health.

Monitor your weight: monitoring your weigh and calculating your body mass index will be very helpful to know how your prevention plan work.

Thank you