Obesity

Obesity means overweight because of too much fat. Persons who have obesity are called obese. Obesity is not an illness, but it increases the risk of seriously, permanent diseases, e.g. diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, joint disorders and cancer. In the western European countries obesity presents serious problems, actually concerning more and more children. Data from 2002 say that in Great Britain there were 23% men and 25% women obese (For details click here).

Fat is the energy storage of the body. It is fitted up every time if the intake of the nutriments is higher than the energy consumption. This excess is called positive energy balance. Is the ingestion of the food lower than their use the body burns up fat from the energy storage. This is called negative energy balance. Human needs energy for their basic metabolism, that means for maintenance all functions of the body, e.g. physical activities and actually digestion itself. A small amount of fat reserves are essential, but too much harms the body.

An indicator for body fatness is the so called Body-Mass-Index (BMI), included weight and height. From a BMI of 30 you speak about obesity.

There are different reasons for obesity:  disposition, hormone dysfunction and special drugs. But  mostly it is caused because of mental founded eating disorder or wrong lifestyle with unbalanced feeding and too little physical activity. Underweight can be dangerous as well. In extreme individual cases the results are deficiency syndrome, dysfunction and organ failure.

Obesity and high waist circumference (men more than 94cm and women more than 80cm) are risk factors to develop a metabolic syndrome, a dangerous combination of obesity, high blood sugar, unpropitious elevated blood lipids and raised blood pressure. Every single of these disease patterns can cause diseases of the organs. Diabetes type 2 and damage of the blood vessels, liver, joints and other organs are some common consequences. (On our homepage there are more information about high blood pressure.)