The Dangers of Excess Body Fat

Most people’s primary motivation for weight management is to improve their appearance. Equally important, however, many other benefits of proper nutrition and regular exercise.

Weight management through reduction of excess body fat plays a vital role in maintaining good health and to combat the disease. In fact, medical evidence that obesity is a major threat to the health and life. (The most common definition of obesity is more than 25 percent body fat for men and more than 32 percent for women.) An estimated one out of three Americans has some excess body fat, an estimated 20 percent are obese.

Excess body fat is associated with large physical threats as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. (Three out of four Americans die of either heart disease or cancer each year under the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey, approximately 80 percent of these deaths are linked to lifestyle factors, including inactivity.)

For example, if you are overweight, it takes more energy for you to breathe because your heart has to work harder to pump blood in the lungs, and that the excess fat throughout the body. This increased workload can cause your heart to become enlarged and can result in high blood pressure and life-threatening irregular heartbeats.

Obese people also tend to have high cholesterol levels, which makes them more prone to arteriosclerosis, a narrowing of the arteries by deposits of plaque. This will be life-threatening when blood vessels become so narrow or blocked, to vital organs such as brain, heart or kidney is deprived of blood. In addition, the narrowing of blood vessels forces the heart to pump harder, and the blood pressure rises. High blood pressure in itself creates more health risks, including heart attacks, kidney failure and stroke. About 25 percent of all heart and blood vessel problems associated with obesity.

Clinical studies have found a link between excess body fat and incidence of cancer. By itself, body fat is said to be a repository for carcinogens (carcinogenic chemicals) in both men and women. In women, excess body fat has been linked to a higher incidence of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, in men, the threat comes from colon and prostate cancer.

There is also a delicate balance between blood sugar, body fat, hormone and insulin. Excess blood sugar is stored in the liver and other vital organs, where the bodies are “full,” the excess blood sugar is converted into fat. As the fat cells themselves become full, they tend to take in less blood sugar. In some obese people, the pancreas produces more insulin, which the body can not use, to regulate blood sugar, and the whole system will be overwhelmed. This poor regulation of blood glucose and insulin results in diabetes, a disease with long-term consequences, including heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, amputation and death. Excess body fat is also linked to gall bladder disease, gastro-intestinal diseases, sexual dysfunction, osteoarthritiis, and stroke.

The reduction of body fat reduces the risk of disease

The good news is that reducing body fat reduces the risk of disease. At the University of Pittsburgh, researchers studied 159 people, as they followed a weight management program. The subjects were under age 45 and 30-70 pounds overweight. These issues, which was able to throw only 10-15 percent of their weight and keep it out during the 18-month study showed significant improvement in HDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels, waist-hip ratio and blood pressure. In fact, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, body fat reduction is a more powerful modulator of cardiac structure than drug therapy.

For people with a family history of heart disease, an active lifestyle can delay or stop the process for all except those with serious genetic diseases. Studies by Dean Ornish, MD, has shown that a comprehensive intervention program that includes regular physical activity, a low fat diet and a stress reduction program can even reverse heart disease process.

Experience also shows that an active lifestyle and help reduce body fat is associated with a reduced risk of certain types of cancer: prostate cancer for men, breast and uterine cancers for women. (Frisch, et al 1985)

In addition, regular physical activity and a low fat diet is successful in the treatment of non-insulin-dependent diabetes (NIDDM), for some patients, it has reduced or eliminated the need for insulin substitutes. Generally regularly active adults have 42 percent lower risk of developing NIDDM.

Achieve Weight happens to most of us

The average American gains at least one pound per year after age 25. Think about it. If you are like most Americans, when you’re 50, you’re likely to get 25 pounds of fat or more. In addition, your metabolism is slowing down, causing your body to work less efficiently in burning fat, it has. At the same time, if you do not exercise regularly, you lose a pound of muscle each year. The people are not only increasing their body fat stores, which increases their risk of disease, but they are also losing muscle, increasing the risk of injury, declining activity performance, and further slow down the metabolism.
Very few Americans exercise in any significant way. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports estimates that only one out of five Americans exercises for the sound at least 20 minutes, three or more days a week. In fact, the average American will have less than 50 minutes of exercise per week. Even worse, two out of five Americans are totally sedentary.

The answer: healthy diets and physical fitness

But there is hope. Moderate weight loss - of fat, not muscle - and a healthy and active lifestyle - and not dieting - have been found to lower health risks and medical problems in 90 percent of overweight patients, improve their heart function, blood pressure, glucose tolerance, sleep disorders, and cho

lesterol levels and to lower their requirements for medication, reduce the frequency and duration of hospitalization and reduce post-operative complications eight times less likely to die of cancer than unfit, and 53 percent less likely to die of other diseases. Fit people are also eight times less likely to die of heart disease.

So, are you willing to be patient and make gradual changes in your life that will lead to a healthier, happier you? When you have made the decision to go forward and accept change, the ha

rd part is over. Sure, there is plenty of work to do, but it really does not matter how long this new process will take. If you allow changes to take place over several years, your body will adjust comfortably, and you will be more inclined to maintain the healthy lifestyle permanently.

When you begin to achieve improvements in energy and physical and mental performance, fun and excitement you experience will make the change well worth the effort. Action creates motivation! Good luck: I hope you will enjoy all the wonderful benefits of a safe and effective weight management program.