Obesity: An Overview What Is the Disease? Term Paper

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Obesity: An Overview

What is the disease?

Obesity is an increasingly prevalent metabolic disorder whereby a patient's BMI or body mass index, defined as the patient's weight in kilograms divided by the patient's height in meters squared in kilograms, is greater than 30. Obesity puts one at greater risk for a number of ailments, and a BMI less than 21 is associated with the greatest protection from coronary heart disease mortality and other life-threatening ailments affecting the heart, other vital organs, and the body's metabolism. (Eckel, 1997)

However, there are problems with the BMI-based definition of obesity, as many women with a BMI of near 30 may be less at risk for heart disease if their increase in adipose tissue is distributed in the pelvis and not the abdomen. Substantial evidence now indicates that an increased waist circumference, or waist-to-hip ratio, better predicts co-morbidities and mortality from obesity, such as heart disease and Type II diabetes better than the strict BMI over 30 definition for obesity. A BMI-based definition of obesity also fails to take body fat distribution into account, or muscle mass in the case of athletes or individuals who engage in powerful muscle mass building activities such as weight training.

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(Eckel, 1997)

The disease paradigm of obesity is also controversial in the medical community, as doctors tend to think of obesity as a condition brought on by behavior. The idea of treating the condition as a disease is thus unpopular. But Dr. Michael Gonzalez-Campoy thinks obesity should be classified as a disease and treated aggressively like other diseases. "If a patient that's hypertensive walks in and out of an office, they leave with a blood pressure pill. If a patient with obesity comes in, their body mass index is high, and you send them out of the office and you don't treat that obesity -- it would be like sending somebody out with a very high blood pressure and not treating it," because the condition puts one at risk for so many other disorders. (Benson, 2003)

What organs do the disease affect and what….....

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