- What is being overweight?
- Causes of being overweight
- Consequences of being overweight
- Overweight and obesity
We explain what overweight is and what its main causes are. In addition, its consequences and differences with obesity.
What is being overweight?
Overweight is understood to be a continuous increase in body weight above certain patterns considered healthy and / or aesthetic, calculated from a Body Mass (MC) formula, which relates the weight, height and height. Overweight people are those adults whose CM index exceeds the average between 18.5 and 24.9 points.
Depending on the degree of overweight we are talking about, the persons can put your Health, and even reach extreme levels, known asobesity. In this sense, being overweight can be a transitory condition, the product of a vital situation, or it can progressively worsen, but in general it is considered a symptom of certain ways of life and feeding, when not of internal changes (hormonal or metabolic).
Despite the use of CM indexes, there is debate about the limits of what is considered healthy or not in terms of being overweight. It should be clarified that the factor of risk It is not so much the weight as such but the volume of adipose (fat) tissue present in the body. In this sense, other indices such as the ICC (Waist / Hip Index) seem to be more relevant to determine it.
In what seems to be uniformity of criteria, is that from a certain degree overweight begins to have harmful implications on health and can become a trouble to attack in the individual.
Above all, it is of care in crucial times of the physical, emotional and psychological development of the individual, such as childhood or Teen, since they can leave an indelible mark on the personality of the individual and bring trouble forward.
Currently, 64% of the population of the United States (and other similar countries) is considered to be overweight or obese in some way, and this figure is expected to increase in the following decades. It has already been considered as a major problem of public health.
Causes of being overweight
Being overweight can have one or more causes, such as:
- General trends due to genetic or hereditary factors.
- Metabolic alterations resulting from congenital ailments or diseases.
- Psychological or emotional disorders in food matters.
- Metabolisms too slow due to very low hormonal secretion.
- Metabolism disorders resulting from drugs or other substances for eventual consumption.
- Extremely sedentary life and sustained poor diet.
Consequences of being overweight
Being overweight in itself is not a serious ailment, beyond the emotional or psychological damage that it can exert on the individual, as a result of its inadequacy to beauty standards that do not contemplate fat or that demonize it. However, there is a proven tendency in overweight people to develop secondary diseases, such as:
- Mellitus diabetes.
- Hypertension.
- Cardiovascular diseases.
- Osteoarthritis
- Hepatic cirrhosis.
- Asthma.
- Greater prone to clotting problems.
- Pancreatitis
- Developmental delay in children and adolescents.
- Decreased fertility.
Overweight and obesity
Obesity is a serious extreme of being overweight.
Although overweight and obesity are not synonymous, the latter can be considered to be a serious and more complicated extreme of being overweight. In the most common evaluation of overweight, four degrees of the condition are usually distinguished, which are:
- Overweight. Between 25 and 29.9 points of BMI.
- Mild obesity Between 30 and 34.9 points of BMI.
- Medium obesity. Between 35 and 39.9 points of BMI.
- Morbid obesity. Between 40 and more BMI points.
If being overweight can be associated in the long run with diseases and ailments, obesity is almost a guarantee of suffering them, and combating it usually involves various aspects of a person's life, from psychological and emotional, to physical and nutritional.