Obesity is quickly becoming one of the biggest problems in the United States. Among both young and old people, obesity has taken hold in the United States, changing the way people interact with one another and having a dramatic impact on the nation’s health. In fact, some believe that obesity is now as big of a problem as smoking when it comes to increasing the nation’s health costs. The bigger problem is that obesity can produce a host of unintended consequences that make life significantly more difficult for the average person. Obesity can put a person at risk for a host of different problems, including sleep apnea, diabetes, heart disease, and respiratory diseases.
Obesity has a major impact on many different parts of the body. When a person is obese, that person’s heart is put under tremendous stress. The person’s bones and muscles are also significantly affected by the condition. One of the most pressing risks, though, is that the obesity will cause long-term sleep and breathing problems. Research suggests that obesity can cause sleep apnea, a condition that could potentially be fatal for people who do not seek the proper treatment. Sleep apnea causes a person to experience shortness of breath or even stopped breathing as they are sleeping (Schwartz et al, 1991). This can be both scary and dangerous, and when there is too much fat in the body, this problem happens much more commonly.
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In addition, obesity can be a risk factor for adult-onset diabetes. When most people think about diabetes, they think about a condition that kids get from the time they are very young. With type 2 diabetes, the body does not use insulin properly. This can come on later in life, especially among people who have poor diets and have lived a significant amount of time with obesity. Not only is diabetes an uncomfortable condition that causes people to have to go through the difficulty of injecting insulin, but it is also a problem that can shorten people’s lives and cause circulatory problems. Some with this condition have lost limbs as a result of their condition, a fact that complicates obesity even further.
Heart disease is perhaps the most pressing concern for people who struggle with obesity (Yudkin et al, 2000). The heart is an organ, and when that organ is stressed, it will not function nearly as well. People who are obese put pressure on their hearts because of high blood pressure levels. Likewise, prolonged obesity has been known to cause scar tissue to develop in certain parts of the body, including the heart. This is one of the top reasons why heart disease has become such a common killer in the United States and in other parts of the world. The more weight the body is carrying around, the more difficult it will be for the heart to maintain its performance and sustain the body.
Some may not know it, but their respiratory conditions may be caused by obesity. Recently, studies have suggested that obesity plays a role in producing an illness that is very much like influenza (Cocoros et al, 2014). It is not like the normal flu, though. Instead, it is like a super version of the flu that can be potentially deadly among those people who do not seek the proper treatment. Why does obesity cause a higher risk for this condition? Researchers could not come to a conclusion on the issue, and they did note that the correlation is relatively light one by statistical standards. Still, obesity has shown to be a major contributor to incidences of this condition, which should suggest to individuals that obesity can cost them in a major way.
As obesity becomes a major problem in the United States, more and more is known about the health problems faced by a population of people who have become as well-known for overeating as for anything else. When a person is obese, he has a chance to develop a wide range of different conditions. Some are life-threatening, and all are worthy of concern. Sleep apnea, diabetes, heart disease, and respiratory conditions rank among the biggest things that obesity will raise the risk of a person for, and these conditions have proven themselves formidable adversaries to people afflicted by obesity.
- Cocoros, N. M., Lash, T. L., DeMaria, A., & Klompas, M. (2014). Obesity as a risk factor for severe influenza‐like illness. Influenza and other respiratory viruses, 8(1), 25-32.
- Schwartz, A. R., Gold, A. R., Schubert, N., Stryzak, A., Wise, R. A., Permutt, S., & Smith, P. L. (1991). Effect of weight loss on upper airway collapsibility in obstructive sleep apnea. American Review of Respiratory Disease, 144(3_pt_1), 494-498.
- Yudkin, J. S., Kumari, M., Humphries, S. E., & Mohamed-Ali, V. (2000). Inflammation, obesity, stress and coronary heart disease: is interleukin-6 the link?. Atherosclerosis, 148(2), 209-214.
