Obesity Detrimental to Women’s Health

Abstract

Obesity is the detrimental to overall health and physical performance. Excess amount of body fat is linked to several diseases including type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular diseases and certain type of cancers, and they increase the morbidity and mortality. The mortality rate increases by 50% to 100% when the body mass index (BMI) is equal to or greater than 30Kg.m^-2. Most of the women after 30‘s suffered from abdominal obesity or disproportion in hip and waist ratio. It appears to serve as platform for variety of clinical health problems, in addition to greater risk of serious illness. It poses other mechanical limitation that limit performance of daily activities. As individual ages, they may lose the ability to regulate energy intake based on physiologic cues, leading to overeating and weight gain. High caloric food with low in nutrients density and sedentary life style are two major causes of obesity. Several methods are used to determine a person‘s ideal body weight; however in many cases especially for athletes, ideal body weight may be unrealistic. Thus, it is better to focus on a healthy body weight rather than ideal body weight. Healthy body weight is different for each individual, athlete or non athlete, and is one that is relative to a person‘s overall health profile. Prevention of weight gain would likely to decrease chronic disease, improve quality of life and decrease health care cost. So, weight management is required by an every individual by increasing the physical activity every day with proper diet.