Do you know the risks of being overweight? It's not just the outside that suffers, like your skin or eyes; but each and every organ in your body. It's also not about being the "supermodel thin" ideal, it's about being healthy. However, being overweight and obese carries serious loads of stress and strain on your body, which over time can cause even more significant problems.
"Men need to be made more aware of the health implications of excess abdominal fat, or central obesity, and how to lose weight," warned Dr David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum.
For example, for all of the women who want children and who are overweight: did you know that all of that extra fat causes you to have problems becoming pregnant? Even if you were able to become pregnant, being obese while carrying a child is associated with a rate of 10x higher blood pressure in the mother, increased birth defects (ie: spina bifida, the incomplete/partially formed spinal cord), and a higher risk of death in both mother and child.
Men have just as a hard time with being overweight as women do: overweight and obese men have greater problems with getting and maintaining an erection.
List of Health Problems
If you thought having a difficult time getting pregnant is the most serious condition of being overweight, think again. Here are just some of the side effects you are at a higher risk for by being overweight:
- Heart disease and stroke: the leading cause of death and disability in the US. Being overweight means you are 2x as likely to have high blood pressure than those who are not overweight, which can contribute to angina, which is chest pain from decreased oxygen to the heart. The scariest part: you can die suddenly from heart disease or stroke without any signs or symptoms.
- Diabetes: type 2 diabetes reduces your body's ability to regulate blood sugar, making overweight people 2x as more likely to die an early death, heart disease, stroke, and blindness.
- High blood pressure
- Gout: disease that affects the joints that is caused by high levels uric acid in the blood.
- Osteoarthritis: Extra pounds places extra pressure on joints that eventually wear away the cartilage (the tissue that cushions the joints) that normally protects them. (Generally, 1 pound of weight = 4 pounds on the joints. Lose even 1 pound and that's 4 pounds of breathing room for your joints!)
- Breathing problems: Sleep apnea, when a person stops breathing for a short time during sleep; asthma.
- Gallstones and Gallbladder disease
- Cancer
- Arthritis
- Inable to gain/hold erection
- Difficulty getting pregnant
- Young death.
These are just some of the side effects that can happen by being overweight. You only have one body, why suffer with extra weight?
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