Why being fat is a health emergency....

Today's Post: Friday, 10-2-2009

Here’s the bad news first. (There IS a good news section that follows.)

In many of the online health sources in the past few days was another very important story.

On Wednesday, this week Reuters had a story with this title.

Obesity in middle age bodes ill for old age

“Women who are obese in middle age may live to be at least 70 but they are nowhere near as healthy as women who”….did not become that fat.

A very large study of American female nurses found that women who steadily gained weight from age 18 tended to have the worst health the researchers found in this study.

“Most had some kind of physical or mental limitation, and more than a third had both chronic diseases and also mental or physical limitations.”

There are two reasons for this.:

1. Being fat directly causes some health problems either because of the effects of the weight or volume of the fat or the metabolic changes caused by the fat itself.

Some health problems that this makes worse or even causes are acid reflux, high blood pressure, and arthritis. One study reported recently that the high leptin levels often found in obese people may actually be a direct cause of osteoarthritis. Then the weight itself makes the problem worse once caused, particularly in the knees and hips.

2. Being fat is to good health what smoke is to a fire. It’s a signal that certain acts and the lack of others that cause good or bad health have consistently been in the undesirable range and may have been for some time.

a) These include eating far too many fast acting, or high glycemic, carbs such as refined grains and foods made from them, concentrated sugars and similar compounds, and the artificial sweeteners that cause you to crave and eat more high-glycemic carbs.

It includes NOT eating an abundant amount and variety of nonstarchy vegetables.

b) And, it includes being sedentary, including a good bit of time each week watching TV which burns less calories that sleeping.

This tends to cause high insulin levels, then insulin resistance, and high blood sugar levels. And those can cause type 2 diabetes, serious harm to your capillaries and circulation, and both circulation impairment resulting in age related mental decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

High insulin levels cause fat gain. And some studies are beginning to show they tend to cause some cancers. (Switching to extra virgin olive instead of other kinds of fats or oils lowers insulin levels.)

This kind of eating plus not exercising also tends to cause high levels of LDL and inflammation and triglycerides AND low levels of HDL. That causes cardiovascular disease and results in more circulation impairment which causes mental decline and erectile dysfunction and PAD, peripheral artery disease. Even worse, if it goes on too long, it can cause heart attacks and strokes.

In short, being fat harms you directly and is diagnostic of bad health habits that are causing you additional harm in ways that cause health problems, many of them quite serious and expensive to treat once you have them.

That’s why being fat is a health emergency.

Recent studies have found that the best diagnostic tool for measuring if you are too fat or not is your waist measurement. Unless you are unusually tall or short – in which case slightly increase or reduce the number, if you are a man, you are too fat if your waist is 40 inches or larger; & if you are a woman, you are too fat if your waist size is 35 inches or more.

So, what’s the good news?

You can fully or partially reverse the causes of obesity and some of these bad health effects.

The basics for fat loss and good health are beginning to be well known.

1. Don’t eat refined grained foods or foods made from them. Don’t drink any soft drinks.
Don’t use artificial sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup. Eat sugar only in small amounts and not very often. If you eat foods made from grain at all eat them in moderation only and only eat whole grain foods.

Do eat an abundant amount and variety of nonstarchy vegetables. Eat some whole fresh fruit each day; but go very easy on fruit juice. Eat only health OK protein foods and oils.

2. Do regular, vigorous exercise, even if just for a few minutes virtually every day. If you can possibly fit it in, also do half an hour a day of walking or gardening or Tai Chi most days.

Cut back TV watching time if you watch hours every day. Be more selective &/or once or more a week go to the gym or go visit a friend in person and actually talk to them fact to face instead of spending the evening watching TV. Never have a TV in your bedroom if you can possibly avoid it. For long or low mental demand TV but which you like, you can also watch from a stationary bicycle while you put the effort into riding it that is equal to a walk or a brisk walk – or, even better alternate between the two.

3. Take the supplements, or it’s really seriously bad, the drugs, that protect you from the effects of the bad health status being fat has caused you.

This may only give you modest protection by itself or even very little. But doing that AND eating right and doing regular exercise can protect you a great deal.

Here are two other pieces of good news.

Exercise is so potent that fat people who exercise regularly actually are usually in better health than sedentary skinny people.

In fact, after just two or three weeks of modest amounts of regular exercise that is not too hard for you, your health will be substantially better. This specifically means that, if you are fat, exercise will begin to protect your health right way – long before you’ve done enough exercise to become less fat.

Remarkably, for many health problems, you can get over half the potential health improvements by just losing 5 to 7 % of your current bodyweight. Even better, most people who follow a decent lifestyle change by eating a LOT better and exercising as we’ve described here can lose that much. And those who simply keep doing it keep the fat off too.