Causes of Obesity
Definition of Obesity
Obesity is defined medically as an excess of body fat. This is usually diagnosed through the use of a body mass index score of 30 or greater. A person’s BMI is determined by using their height and weight. So if a person weighs more than is considered by the medical community healthy for their height they would have a higher BMI. Obesity is defined by the amount of fat and not weight because weight comes from muscle, bone, fat, and body water ("Obesity" Medline).
Causes of Obesity and Obesity Related Conditions
Some people have a genetic predisposition to storing energy as fat. A person’s genetic tendency to gain weight in the form of fat can be seen through the use of a family history. This would allow doctors to assess a person’s risk of developing certain conditions in the future. There was likely n evolutionary benefit for our ancestors to have genes that made them store more fat than others, since such an adaptation would allow them to survive a period of famine better than others; however, in our society where food is plentiful year round it has led to people storing much more fat than is healthy and developing medical conditions because of it ("Obesity" Medline).
There are multiple medical conditions that are associated with obesity such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, obstructive sleep apnea and some cancers. While not all of these diseases are necessarily caused by being obese, it has been shown for all of these diseases that if one is obese then there are a statistically greater chance of you developing these conditions than if one were not obese (Adams). For example heart disease is often caused by high cholesterol as well as hypertension which tend to be elevated if a person happens to be obese.
This being said none of the sources that were found can show a causal effect of obesity on the prevalence of these diseases. The all state that obesity increases a person’s risk of developing such diseases and that there has been a correlation between levels of obesity in our population and frequency of such diseases; however, whether this is actually due to obesity or whether obesity is actually a symptom of another environmental problem is something that the scientific community has yet to answer. A journal article by G. Egger & J. Dixon argues that it is actually the aberrant lifestyles that people live that are the cause of many of the chronic conditions that we commonly associate with obesity. It presents the evidence that our poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, lack of sleep, stress, and smoking all can induce many of the conditions that are associated with obesity such as chronic low grade inflammation (Egger and Dixon).
How Fat and Lifestyle Effect Health
It has been shown that not all fat deposits tend to be associated with increased risk for obesity related conditions. It is the proportions of various deposits that can influence a person’s risk factors for many of the different conditions. It has also been shown that the levels of fat in a person’s body don’t indicate any certain result. If an obese person is physically active and eats healthy it has been shown that they can be in better health than a thin person who is inactive and doesn’t watch their diet. This combined with genetic factors that can be inferred from the patient’s family history, insulin resistance, and the onset age of obesity, since it has been shown that there is a correlation between earlier onset obesity and higher risk for many obesity related diseases. This is in largely due to the fact that in American society we lead a sedentary lifestyle and in general younger people have a higher metabolism than older people, and thus is more likely to be able to burn off the calories that they intake provided that they are eating properly. This means that if a younger person becomes obese it is statistically more likely that they are either not eating healthy or they are not getting enough exercise, a major problem among young Americans, which is more likely to lead to many of the chronic conditions that are associated with obesity than just being obese is (Malnik and Knobler).