Article Medically Reviewed By:
Rebecca S. Reeves, DrPH
Assistant Professor Behavioral Medicine Research Center Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX
Overview
What Is It?
Obesity is a complex disorder. It is caused by multiple factors, both environmental and inherited, including excessive calorie and food intake, decreased physical activity and genetic influences.
America has become a nation of chronically overweight people. Today approximately 66.3 percent of American adults are either overweight or obese, and 32 percent are obese, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population. Between 1994 and 2004, the percentage of Americans who met the criteria for being overweight rose from 56 to 66 percent, and the percentage who met the criteria for obesity rose from 23 to 32 percent. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 32 percent of Americans are obese. Why are these facts alarming?
Obesity, along with unhealthy dietary habits and lifestyles that don't include much or any physical activity, is the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States and results in an estimated $117 billion in health care costs each year. Overweight people are more likely to have high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol, major risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Additionally, the results of a large study supported by the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) suggest that excess body weight is strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of heart failure.
As people become overweight, their glucose tolerance declines, putting them at twice the risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a major cause of early death, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke, blindness and amputation. Several types of cancer are associated with being overweight, including cancer of the uterus, gallbladder, kidney, breast and colon. Other conditions linked with obesity include sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, gout, gallbladder disease and infertility. Obesity-related conditions worsen as weight increases and often improve as the excess weight is lost.
Obesity is a major component of a group of metabolic risk factors known collectively as metabolic syndrome, including:
- Central obesity (too much fat tissue in and around the abdomen)
- Elevated fasting glucose equal to or greater than 100 mg/dL
- High triglycerides (equal to or greater than 150 mg/dL) and low HDL cholesterol (less than 40 mg/dL for men or less than 50 mg/dL for women), which are both associated with plaque accumulation in the arteries
- High blood pressure (130/85 mm HG or higher)
- Insulin resistance or glucose intolerance
- Other proinflammatory and prothrombotic states
Health conditions that promote metabolic syndrome are overweight/obesity, physical inactivity and genetic factors. People who have this syndro...
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