“Obesity is one of the most pervasive, chronic diseases in need of new strategies for medical treatment and prevention. As a leading cause of United States mortality, morbidity, disability, healthcare utilization and healthcare costs, the high prevalence of obesity continues to strain the United States healthcare system.
Obesity is defined as excess adipose tissue. There are several different methods for determining excess adipose (fat) tissue; the most common being the Body Mass Index (BMI) (see below). A fat cell is an endocrine cell and adipose tissue is an endocrine organ. As such, adipose tissue secretes a number of products, including metabolites, cytokines, lipids, and coagulation factors among others. Significantly, excess adiposity or obesity causes increased levels of circulating fatty acids and inflammation. This can lead to insulin resistance, which in turn can lead to type 2 diabetes” – the Obesity Society
Notice the passages I have highlighted and why…
- Obesity is a disease – not an affliction caused by overeating or poor discipline
- The result of Obesity is an insatiable hunger that cannot be solved by traditional methods
- Traditional doctors and medical practices believe that Obesity can be cured by eating less and exercising more
- Lack of exercise for people with Obesity is a result of the affliction not the cause
- Obesity is created in a body when insulin is used to pack every bit of available sugar into the cells as fat until the person with the affliction is hungry continuously
- People with Obesity are trapped in a body that can’t follow any of the traditional rules and the eventual outcome of Obesity is inevitably type 2 diabetes and dementia.
There are problems today in traditional healthcare with the definition of Obesity, how we talk about the effects of Obesity, and whether medical practitioners actually believe that Obesity can be cured other than via eating less and exercising more.
If you would like to learn what really causes obesity and how you can reverse obesity, watch this video.
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Michael,
This is a lot of very good information, which I greatly appreciate. I completely agree with you and that we need to watch how we define obesity and how we work to solve this disease. I was shocked by obesity per economic class. I would think that the higher the economic level the more education would lead to a greater respect for one’s self. Is it just a case of we have more money so we eat more?
Steve – thanks for your comments. Yes, having more money just means we can afford more readily what we shouldn’t eat. In the case of poor economies, it was always that folks in 3rd world countries had no access to western packaged foods and could only eat whole foods which kept them safe. Now that packaged “western” foods are more available and traders offer them even the smallest and most remote tribes are falling victim to obesity from eating carbohydrates – something that was unknown their diets before we intervened. Nowadays we also have the influence of having a large family who needs to eat fast when you’re coming home from work, so time pressures force poor choices that again eliminate whole foods from our diet.
Whole foods – fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, etc. are packaged in a manner that is nutrients rich with low carb density. Our creator knew how to design foods that combined all the right nutrients and made it harder for carbs to be converted to sugar quickly. Now that we’ve gone into the business of making our foods, and especially since we believe that high carbs and low fat is our solution to all health problems, we have lost faith in the way foods were packaged since the beginning of time.
Obesity has really harmful effects and your post really scares me, LOL. It does show you a reality but the sad part is that people over a certain age find it really difficult to lose weight since they lose interest in most of the activities.
Same has been happening to my mum and I really do not understand how to get her to lose some weight!
Shrey
Thank you for your comment. I understand your concern and frustration over your “mum.”
As I am probably the age of your mum or older (I’m 72) I can relate to this problem as the subject. Our obesity comes from several main sources. A lack of exercise is only one of them. The types of foods we select and that are easiest for us to access are another problem and with older folks, we often expose ourselves to toxins that disrupt our hormones based on old habits – like the use of hairspray, or hair products, the use of other cosmetics, as well as the use of cleaners around the home, sprays and so on.
Food that we used to eat are no longer the same. Diary for instance now contains GMOs, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and at the very least these new ingredients in milk disrupt our hormones and make us more prone to inflammation and fat storage. The same is true of our meats – beef, pork, and chicken. Without some education and careful buying of foods, we can introduce new toxic substances into our diet that weren’t there before, or that are in concentrations we never experienced. Our bodies can eliminate some of this but our bodily systems to detoxify are weak and can’t handle it all.
For seniors like us, the only thing I have found to work is gradual education. Some seniors will read a book if you provide some carefully selected books. Some will watch a video. And over time it becomes like “Chinese Water Torture” – a little drop here and there that gradually adds up.
I have a mother in law who is 86 and here problem is worse because she isn’t obese but she is developing symptoms of auto-immune, a companion to this problem that sometimes shows up without the obesity. She suffers from coughing and choking on things as simple as water. She has skin problems and inflammation in her joints. Her hearing and eyesight were degenerating. It has taken a number of years of just constantly putting information in front of her and giving her videos for it to begin soaking in. She had to become interested in educating herself and finding out how she could improve her condition.
When you try to make people “see the light” they generally dig in and resist. The more you lecture the more they don’t listen. Of course they will often listen to their doctor but unless you can take them to a functional medicine doctor, you’re just going to hear the same “diagnose and prescribe” kind of advice that is the specialty of traditional medicine and getting your mum on blood pressure pills or statins, etc. is all that traditional medicine can do for her and that will just make the situation worse – along with the classic advice, “Eat less, exercise more.”
The one thing you have to understand about your mum and others is that eating less and exercising more is not going to fix her problem.
Best of luck and thanks again for your comment.
Never really saw obesity as a disease but do now ! Thank you for the teaching. It is so true that the weight packs on at a certain life-stage, and yes, it’s when we become less active. Might be when the children come along. Yes, they run you off your feet but there are many hours spent lying watching telly with them or hoovering up the food they don’t want 🙂 Going off to work each day plays its part in keeping the weight off. I found that when I retired, the weight came along. We do need to stay as active as we can, so true !
There are a few titles on the header menu of your website that I want to read too.
Thanks a lot for all of this informative and valuable information, Michael. What are you doing to help you from getting obese ? Do you have any pearls of wisdom for me ?
Roy – thanks for your comments.
I think most people have bought the lie. You’re getting obese because you exercise less and eat more. That’s just not true in most cases. We get obese because we suffer from inflammation and that causes every organ in our body to malfunction – it just depends on which are the weakest links in the chain.
So if you’re obese stop thinking your only solution is what they show you on TV or your doctor tells you “exercise more and east less.”
We have to realize that all of this is just crap!
Find the source of your inflammation – is it toxins? is it food sensitivity? find out what it is because it’s making you sick which is causing you to make fat cells and as soon as you get that out of our body things will begin to get better.
And make sure to read this article – http://health-over-70.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=750&action=edit