We hear all the time about the problem with obesity. Children are overweight, and there are more people dieting in the Western World than ever before. There are people of all shapes and sizes, with varying health concerns, ailments, or problems.
While many doctors encourage healthy eating for the overall effects, they also want people to lose or gain weight. There’s a focus on the BMI of children and adults to make sure they are eating enough and developing properly. While there are limitations to the BMI, it’s a guide for a healthy lifestyle.
Weight management is becoming a major concern for doctors and health experts. It’s become a concern for the whole world. Here are six reasons why it is so important for all.
Your Joints Need You to Take Pressure Off
Your joints go through a lot, especially your ankles and knees. They must hold your body up and keep it moving. The more you weight, the more effort your joints must put in. Eventually, they struggle to move, and their health is negatively affected.
If you were all muscle, your joints wouldn’t have a problem. The muscles can sustain the heaviness within your overall body. The muscle strength and tone will help the health of the joints. When it’s all fat, your muscles can’t take the strain. Your joints are left doing far more than they should.
Too many people who are anoverweight struggle with painful joints. The knees are the most commonly affected area, but it can also cause problems for the ankles, elbows, and back. Problems like osteoarthritis and other degenerative joint diseases are far more common if you are overweight.
Osteoarthritis is a disease where the joints slowly lose cartilage. When this happens, the bones start rubbing together, damaging and wearing them away. Think of the bones like two rocks rubbing together. It doesn’t sound or feel great.
There’s this common view that osteoarthritis affects everyone anyway. What’s the point in managing the weight when we’re going to suffer from it in later life? Yes, osteoarthritis is common, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prevent it from developing or help to manage the pain and discomfort you feel.
When you’re overweight, you’re less likely to move. Your joints hurt because of the weight, but your lack of movement makes them worse. Your muscles weaken, and then you put more strain on the joints. If you moved more and built the muscles, you’d find your joints wouldn’t suffer as much. You can slow down the process of osteoarthritis and even prevent it from happening!
Studies have shown that those who are obese are more likely to suffer from degenerative joint diseases. Those who manage their weight and build their muscle are more likely to live healthier and happier lives.
You’ll Find It Easier to Sleep
Your weight affects far more than your joints. It can also affect your ability to sleep. It sounds odd, especially as you tend to be more fatigued when you’re overweight. The bad night’s sleep is due to the higher risk of developing sleep apnoea when you’re overweight or obese.
Anyone can suffer from sleep apnoea, but it is usually those who are overweight. The condition is when the upper airway becomes blocked while you sleep. This could be due to the soft part in the roof of your mouth or even your tongue moving to block the airways. Your body doesn’t get the oxygen it needs, so wakes you up to alert you to the problem. Most of the time you won’t even know that you’re suffering from it. You can quickly take in a breath, roll over, and just go back to sleep.
Yes, you will stop breathing if you suffer from sleep apnoea. It’s far more than just an annoying sleep disorder. You’re risking your life if you don’t do something to make changes to the disorder.
But if it’s something that could happen to any of us, why is there any point in managing our weight? Well, those who are overweight are more likely to suffer from sleep apnoea than those of a normal weight. This is because there’s more to block the airways.
People who are overweight or obese have fat that could narrow the airways and make it more likely for the airway to collapse or become blocked. The weight of the gat will also put extra weight on the chest cavity, meaning the lungs must work harder to fill up. Space for your lungs to fill is made smaller, so your body also doesn’t get as much oxygen as it needs. This is an extra problem on top of the sleep apnoea.
Your fat will also change the hormonal signals within your body, as it’s a hormone-producing organ! It changes the way your respiratory system signals around the body and works.
Those who already have sleep apnoea will make their condition worse when they gain weight. Just a 5% gain in weight will lead to a 250% increased severity in your sleep apnoea. It snowballs from there and is far more serious for children!
By suffering from sleep apnoea, you’re not going to get enough quality sleep. Your body is constantly waking you to help it breathe. This leads to your metabolism being affected, as you don’t get enough sleep to regulate it. If your metabolism slows down, you find it harder to burn the calories you consume, and you’re more likely to gain more weight.
At the same time, you’re at an increased risk of inflammation within the body. The hormonal disruption affects other parts of your health. All this because of sleep apnoea that could improve and even disappear if you opted to manage your weight.
Your Food and Drink Taste Better
If you weren’t going to change your weight because of your health, then at least change it for your happiness. When you manage your weight, and get yourself to a healthier level, you will find that your food tastes so much better.
This will initially sound odd. After all, your food doesn’t exactly taste bad because of your weight, right? Well, what you think you’re tasting isn’t the way it should be. You may not even notice at first, especially if you’ve been overweight for a long time. As you lose weight and you taste your food differently, you will remember the changes.
It’s not clear why this happens. It could be linked to the hormonal changes or the signal changes. There could also be the fact that you’re going to make healthier choices when you’re losing and managing your weight. You are more likely to opt for natural foods that don’t have all the chemicals. This helps to keep the toxins out and allows you to taste the food the way it’s meantto.
The sensitivity of your taste buds will also change. Remember your metabolism, sleep cycles, and much more change because of your weight. These will all affect the signals from your taste buds into your brain. When you opt for a healthier diet and lose the weight, you’ll find that your taste buds become more empowered.
There is a major benefit to enjoying your food more. You’re more likely to stick to the new diet that you set. You want to eat more than you enjoy, and you don’t feel like you’re on a diet. This diet becomes a lifestyle choice, making it easier to maintain your weight for the long term. At the same time, you enjoy your life more because you find enjoyment in the food you eat.
Your Immune System Gets Extra Support
Being overweight will lead to problems with your immune system. There are plenty of reasons for this. When you’re overweight or obese, you’re more likely to suffer from common colds and other ailments. You feel like you catch any cold that everyone has, and you spend more time trying to fight the colds than living life.
By losing weight, you’ll support your immune system considerably. Let’s just look at the fact that you will change the foods that you eat. When you opt for a healthier lifestyle and better weight management, you will find your diet consists of more vegetables, fruits, and foods that are full of nutrients. You get the antioxidants, proteins, and other elements that will support the health of the cells, thegrowth of muscles, and improved immune system.
With just this one change, your body will be able to fight off more infections. You can also find you get fewer inflammatory responses when there’s not anything there. The body isn’t fighting against an imaginary threat, so it is more focused on fighting the real ones.
At the same time, you must remember that fat affects your hormones. When the hormones are out of balance, the immune system is weakened. It can’t react when there is an infection in the body. The right hormones aren’t in the body to help support your health.
And then there’s the fact that your gut will be full of bad bacteria when you’re overweight. You are more likely to eat foods that don’t support the growth of good bacteria. Around 80% of your immune system is in the digestive system. You need to support this part of your body through your food to make sure your immune system can work better.
Finally, there’s the way your obesity is causing problems for sleeping. Your body needs the rest to recover. When you sleep, your immune system works hard to rid the body of infection. It’s one of the reasons you’re so fatigued when you are under the weather. When you get more sleep, your immune system can work harder and more efficiently to rid the badness out of your body.
It’s not just general illnesses that you’re more likely to suffer from when you’re overweight. Poor weight management can also lead to a higher risk of gum disease, stomach infections, and even herpes.
But there are issues if you are underweight too. When you don’t weigh enough, there are high chances that your body isn’t getting enough energy. You become run down, and your immune system doesn’t get the nutrients needed to remove illnesses and infections from the body.
You Reduce the Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s
Did you know that your weight can affect the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other cognitive problems? Like with the other problems above, there are multiple reasons for this to happen. Unfortunately, doctors don’t know all the ways you’re affected because they don’t completely understand issues with the brain.
One of the biggest reasons is linked to diet. It’s strongly believed that dementia and other cognitive degenerative diseases are linked to free radicals within the brain. The cells in the brain are damaged and can’t repair easily. They come back abnormally and prevent the connections within the brain to work properly.
A poor diet is also one that will likely have little healthy fat. Sure, you get plenty of vegetable oils, fried foods, and processed products for the fat, but they’re the wrong type of fat. They all saturate in your body and clog the arteries. You’re at a higher risk of developing heart disease and have a stroke.
When you choose a healthier diet, you can focus on getting unsaturated fats. These are the ones that help the blood flow to the body. They support the health and development of the brain and support the nerves. You’re at a lower risk of suffering heart and brain issues.
Studies have even shown that healthy fats will help improve cognitive functions. They help you remain mentally sharp, improving your concentration and memory.
What is the affect with the weight other than the poor diet? Well, it comes to studies that show those who have a larger belly are more likely to suffer from dementia. This is possibly linked to the amount of inflammation in the body, due to the fat. That hormonal disruption comes into play again. When there is more inflammation of the brain, there is far more risk of developing poor brain connections. You’ll feel sluggish and find it much harder to concentrate. Your long and short-term memories suffer.
Even if you don’t put yourself at risk of developing dementia, your mental health is at risk. Those who are overweight have lower self-esteems. You’re more likely to worry about what people think and worry about the clothes you wear. This can sound superficial, but it’s human nature to want to be accepted.
Your mental health also takes a battering regarding anxiety and depression. Your hormones are imbalanced, and you’ll feel more stress. This leads to fewer happy hormones making their way through your body. You’ll find it much harder to feel enjoyment in life. A healthy diet can help, but a healthy weight will be even better for you.
You Have a Better Chance of Surviving Surgery or Childbirth
Surgery and childbirth have come a long way over the last 100 years, but they’re still not perfect. People have died from very routine and simple procedures. In fact, you’ll always be warned of all the risks involved. The truth is that it’s almost impossible to get rid of all the risks.
One of the reasons for higher risks of death in surgery and childbirth is something only you can control. It’s your weight! By being at a healthy BMI, you are far more likely to survive both childbirth and surgery. That childbirth survival is regardless of C-section or natural birth.
You are also more likely to survive an emergency if you’re at a healthy BMI. Your fat will get in the way of intubating if the doctors need to find an airway. If they can’t do this, they need to find another way to make a hole to get air into your lungs, or they wait too long, and your brain suffers.
Those who are overweight are also more likely to suffer from longer time on the operating table. This increases the chance of developing an infection, even though the environment is sterile. You are more likely to need a catheter or suffer from postoperative complications. You have a higher heart rate, which can also cause more problems while you’re in surgery.
Women who are overweight and pregnant are also more likely to need a C-section. This is another surgery, but you won’t be able to recover from the surgery as easily or as quickly. If you do have a natural birth, forceps and other instruments are more likely needed, and you can end up with more infections wherever there have been tears. Of course, your body’s immune system is already suffering from the weight, which means it’s harder for the body to fight off the infections.
It’s Time to Manage Your Weight
Weight management is crucial for a healthy life. Even if your diet is overall healthy, overeating will cause weight gain and problems overall. You are more likely to suffer from sleep apnoea, which will affect the amount of quality sleep that you get on a night. Your hormonal changes will affect far more within your body, including the effectiveness of your immune system.
The best thing you can do is stick to a healthy and balanced diet. Get your weight on a healthy BMI and get rid of the fat. You will find that you’re happier and can do more. You’ll also suffer from fewer mental health issues.
