subject: What Are The Health Risks Of Being Overweight? [print this page] What Are The Health Risks Of Being Overweight?
Let us start at the beginning - why would you want to lose weight? Perhaps you are happy being overweight. Or on the other hand being overweight may be making you unhappy. It could be that you are feel embarrassed with how you look or perhaps you lack energy. Or you might have been told by your doctor that you have higher health risks from being too fat. Everyone is different, so how big an issue is being overweight and what are the health risks of being overweight?
Health Risks
Being a few pounds overweight is not necessarily anything to worry about especially if you lead an active live or do some regular exercise. Being more that a few pounds overweight or being clinically obese is an issue because, even if you are happy with how you look and feel, you will have an increased risk of developing many different health conditions.
Diseases associated with being overweight
Some of the diseases that are associated with being overweight include heart disease leading to heart attacks, high blood pressure (hypertension) with risk of stroke, raised cholesterol levels, brittle bones (osteoarthritis), type 2 diabetes, stroke and even cancer.
There are also plenty of other disorders including the strain put on your body by carrying extra weight which can lead to back pain, problems with your digestive system and obesity in mothers has even been liked to birth defects in new-born babies.
Being overweight and under-nourished
It is a surprising fact that you can be over weight and yet under-nourished, which means that you are lacking in the essential vitamins and minerals to maintain the health of the cells that make up your body. This is where the link to cancer comes in, including breast, throat and colon cancers. Your body needs to be well nourished with vitamins and minerals to fight of cancer forming cells, known as free radicals, that occur naturally in your body.
Psychological impacts of being overweight
If you are unhappy with how you look and feel you are probably also battling with the social stigma of being over weight. In our western society, fat is not considered to be beautiful so if you are over-weight you have to deal with all the negative images associates with this which can lead to depressions or lack of self esteem and other psychological problems.
Eating a healthy diet is the first step to losing weight and decreasing the health risks associated with being over-weight. Click here to read about weight-loss basics
