With the continuous increase of obesity cases worldwide, weight management has since become crucial. It’s actually becoming a serious concern for health professionals and experts in the medical field. Below are five reasons why weight management should be treated with more importance.
1. To take pressure off your joints
Your joints, specifically your ankles and knees, experience strains as they help your body stay balanced and keep it mobile. The heavier you weigh the greater effort your joints exert. Ultimately, it becomes more difficult for them to move and their health is compromised. Your joints wouldn’t have troubles if you were all muscles since the muscles are able to support your body’s weight. The strength of the muscles also helps with sustaining your joints’ health.
But, if it’s all fat, your muscles are unable to take the pressure. Thus, your joints are left doing far more than what it’s bargained for. This is the reason overweight people suffer from joint pains, especially the knees. Moreover, being overweight also makes it harder to move. Your joints are in pain because of the weight, but it’s the lack of mobility that makes it worse. It’s also been shown in studies that obese individuals are more likely to suffer from degenerative joint diseases.
2. To sleep easier
Your weight also has an impact on the quality of your sleep. The poor sleep you may be experiencing is caused by the greater risk of developing sleep apnea when you’re overweight or obese. While anyone can have sleep apnea, the risk is higher when you’re overweight. This is because overweight or obese people have fat that could constrict the airways and make it more possible for the airway to become obstructed.
The gat’s weight will also put additional weight on the chest cavity. This means the lungs have to work further to fill up. Because the space for your lungs to fill becomes tinier, the body doesn’t get sufficient oxygen. This is another medical issue apart from sleep apnea.
3. To strengthen your immunity
Eventually, being overweight can compromise your immune system. When you’re obese or overweight, the likelihood for you to catch common colds and other illnesses is also higher. By shedding pounds, you’ll support your immune system significantly. This is because losing weight means sticking to nutritious foods. Your diet will now involve more fruits and vegetables, which means lots of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other nourishing components that your body needs to thrive.
As your body gets these nutrients, your cells become healthier, your muscles develop, and your immune system becomes stronger. With this change in your eating habits, your body will be more capable of fighting off infections. It is also important to note that fat can affect your hormones and obviously not in a good way. So, when your hormones aren’t balanced, the immune system is also negatively affected.
4. To lower the risk of Alzheimer’s
Interestingly, your weight can affect your risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other cognition-related issues. Though it’s not yet determined how weight problems and diseases in the brain are linked, experts believe one of the correlations is diet. It’s widely considered that dementia and other cognitive issues are associated with free radicals in the brain. The cells in the brain then become impaired and can’t revamp effortlessly. Hence, they become back abnormally and avoid the connections in the brain to function properly.
Furthermore, a poor diet also means that your consumption of saturated fat is higher when it’s healthier to go for the unsaturated fats. These are the kind of fats that help with blood flow. Unsaturated fats also help with brain development and support the nerves. By consuming the healthy kind of fats, you’re reducing your risk of suffering heart and brain-related diseases. What’s more is that there’s clinical evidence that proves healthy fats to be helpful when it comes to boosting your cognitive capacities.
5. To increase the chance of surviving surgery or childbirth
There are always risks even from the simplest procedures on the operating table. In all honesty, it’s hard to eradicate all these risks. Being overweight increases the risk of complications during childbirth and surgery. For instance, the fat in your body can get in the way of intubation in the case that the doctors need to find an airway. As a result, they urgently need to find another way for making a hole to get air into your lungs. Your brain could suffer if they wait too long.
People who are overweight are also more likely to spend more time on the operating table, heightening the chance of developing an infection despite the surroundings being germ-free. It’s even more probable for you to suffer from postoperative complications if you don’t have a healthy BMI. Because being overweight can increase your heart rate, there’s possibility for you to encounter issues while you’re being operated on. Additionally, overweight women are also more likely to require a C-section when giving birth.
