Obesity-related FAQs

Who is identified as obese?

Determining whether someone is overweight or obese is often determined by assessing a person's body mass index (BMI), which is a ratio between weight and height. If your BMI falls between 25 and 29.9, you are overweight. If your BMI is 30 or higher, you are considered obese.

However, you may have an excess fat percentage in your body even though the total weight looks less. If this excess fat is causing diseases like diabetes, hypertension, psychological discomfort and resistant to medical treatment, you may be a candidate for metabolic treatment.

What are the health risks related to obesity?

Being obese puts you at risk for a number of preventable diseases and conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, gallbladder disease, breathing problems, certain types of cancer, chronic back pain, osteoarthritis, infertility, PCOS, psycho-social challenges.

Obesity may also take a toll on self-esteem and contribute to depression. On a positive note, there are various proven treatments available for treating obesity.

What is the link between obesity and hypertension?

Hypertension or high blood pressure occurs when the force with which the blood pushing against the artery wall is too high. Any blood pressure above a mark of 140/90 is called blood pressure and above 180/120 is called severe.

The significant rise in obesity is found to have a direct correlation to risk of high blood pressure.

Obesity and hypertension together can give rise to an array of health issues and challenges there by affecting health, quality of life and life expectancy. Apart from just weight and obesity the fat distribution is also an important factor that plays a major role. Abdominal Obesity or central obesity around the waist circumference is the influencing factor for developing hypertension.

Is obesity a disease?

Obesity is now defined as a “chronic, relapsing, multifactorial, neurobehavioral disease, wherein an increase in body fat promotes adipose tissue dysfunction and abnormal fat mass physical forces, resulting in adverse metabolic, biomechanical, and psychosocial health consequences.”

Obesity is not just a cosmetic concern, as it is a medical problem that increases your risk of other diseases and health problems.

The challenge in dieting and exercising

Proper diet and exercise do work in helping you reach weight goals, especially when started at a young age and continued faithfully throughout your life.

Unfortunately, for people who are already struggling with obesity, the cards are stacked against them. Diet and exercise work more for prevention or during early treatment of obesity.

However, if the body physiology is trying to get your weight back, your attempts to lose weight succeed temporarily, at times. Once a person's BMI crosses a certain limit, say above 30 kg/m2, the metabolism changes to that of weight regain. This is largely the reason why there are fluctuating results in losing weight with diet and exercise if you have severe obesity.