Complications of Being Obese

Effects of obesity are felt all over both physically and mentally. Below are a few of the complications, either created or worsened by those extra pounds. Heart Obesity can cause an increase in blood pressure and heart attack. When you have increased blood pressure, it can damage  multiple organs in the body including kidneys, heart, blood vessels and many more. The heart and the circulatory problems resulting from obesity affect all organs in the human body. For example:Retina (impairs vision)
Brain (stroke, paralysis, muscle weakness, dementia, bleeding in the brain)
Kidneys (failure to excrete waste product efficiently which may result to hemodialysis)
Heart (heart attack and heart failure)
Swelling of the limbs and painful legs
Lungs Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome(OHS) is a disease in which the excess weight can limit your chest wall movements and make your breathing shallow. Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is also a very common disease in obese and overweight patients. OSA causes the throat to close while sleeping. In both cases people suffer from lethargy, day time sleepiness, chronic fatigue, frequent infections (pneumonia et al). Eventually heart failure and death can happen in these patients. Central Obesity The metabolic changes in obesity are more known than before. Increase in the waist line is significantly related with Metabolic Syndrome (MS). Metabolic syndrome consists of:Blood glucose abnormality
Blood cholesterol Triglyceride abnormality
Low good cholesterol (HDL) level
Increase waist line
Elevated BP
The other condition called “fatty liver” is also common in obese patients. As the name suggests, fatty liver is the condition in which excessive fat seeps into to the liver. Fatty liver may sometimes lead into cirrhosis of the liver in long run. Fatty liver is one of the three most common causes of the cirrhosis of liver – where it turns into fibrosis. Insulin Resistance Syndrome is a condition in which body itself becomes resistant to insulin. Thus insulin cannot perform its normal function. Insulin acts in the fat cell, muscle cell and liver cells. In fat cells, it releases fatty acid into blood stream. In muscle cells, it fails to pick up the glucose from the muscles and causes increased blood glucose. In liver cells, it reduces the glucose storage in liver, again causing the increased blood glucose. As a result, obese people have high glucose level despite having enough insulin in the body. That leads to diabetes, poorly controlled diabetes or insulin requiring diabetes. Skin, Bones and Muscles Osteoarthritis is the one of the obesity complication which sometimes can be reversed when people lose weight. As per definition, obesity is excess fat accumulation which is hanging on the body and most likely it hangs around the waist and hips. Despite the body becoming larger, all internal organs and bone structures remain more or less the same. The joints that are designed to carry the usual body weight are under tremendous stress as they have to carry more weight. Even the benefits of the joint replacement surgery is very much directly proportional to the ability to lose weight after surgery. Sometimes despite the joint replacement, obese people may still be in pain if their body continues to stay at a larger than normal size. The other problem with the obesity is back pain and disorders. This includes slipped discs, nerve compression and degenerative disc disease. As a result, it limits the ability to be active which makes one gain even more weight. The vicious cycle continues from there and with increasing discomfort. Multiple skin breakdowns, recurrent infection, swelling of legs are the other problems we do see often in the obese patients. Delayed wound healing is also very commonly seen  as obesity related complication. The longer the recovery time after surgery, the increased chance of surgical incision infection, abscess formation, the delayed healing and non-healing and multiple recurrence of wound infection are all common in the obese population. Does obesity also carry higher risk of developing a cancer? Surely yes. There is more and more evidence that obese people have a higher chance of developing cancer. It increases the chance of developing cancers of the kidney, uterus, breast, colon, esophagus, prostate and gall bladder. Reproductive System Infertility and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) are obesity related conditions and which can be improved with maintaining a healthy weight.