WHY WEIGHT IS A MEDICAL ISSUE (FOR EVERYONE)

If you visit your primary care provider for anything, whether for a bad cough, bad headache or bad rash (don’t worry, we won’t ask!), what is the one thing you can always expect to happen? That’s right, you will be asked to step on the scale. But why?

Body weight is a key indicator of overall health. For instance, drastic swings up or down in weight may indicate a more serious health issue that your provider may want to more fully investigate and treat.

But even if weight shifts incrementally, your provider is always paying attention, making sure it’s staying within a healthy weight range. The reason is because your weight is so intertwined with the biological functions that keep you alive and thriving. If your weight falls outside of the healthy range it can throw your health into disarray.

Sometimes a problem in a biological system causes the change in weight, but more often a change in weight has an impact on the systems. In today’s society, it is more common for primary care providers to be concerned about weights that fall on the higher end of the spectrum.

Here are just a few examples of how your weight truly is medical in nature:

Your blood doesn’t circulate as well. When you carry too much weight, specifically in the form of fat, it releases hormones and other substances that clog up your arteries with a material called plaque. The plaque buildup blocks the healthy flow of blood to your vital organs, which can lead to symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness and heart palpitations. Eventually, clogged arteries can rupture, leading to a heart attack or stroke. Blocked circulation is also particularly dangerous for diabetics who develop a common condition called peripheral artery disease (PAD). People with PAD have narrow blood vessels, mostly in the legs and feet, caused by fatty deposits. In addition to significantly increasing the chances of heart attack or stroke, PAD can also lead to amputation of the leg or foot.

You can’t convert food to energy as well. Food is the body’s fuel. It’s how we create the energy we need to complete everyday tasks and live our lives. When we eat, it is a signal to the body’s metabolic processes to get to work converting nutrients into energy. One of the most important cogs in the metabolic wheel is a hormone called insulin, which is essential to breaking carbohydrates down into useful energy. But if your body weight and blood sugar levels are too high, insulin can’t convert all of the carbs you consume. When that happens, your liver converts it to fat instead. And if your blood sugar is constantly elevated over a long period, you can likely develop type 2 diabetes.

Your hormones go out of whack. You can think of hormones as biological regulators. They do things like tell the body when it’s time to eat, go to sleep, or how to deal with stressful situations. When you have too much body fat, your body releases enzymes which disrupt these hormones from working properly. This results in increased hunger, overeating, sluggishness and weight gain. For more on how hormones impact weight loss and ways to correct hormonal imbalance, listen to our podcast CMWL Weight Loss Talk with Dr. Pinto.

You have problem with your joints and muscles. Carrying excess weight causes extra wear and tear on the body. According to the Arthritis Foundation, every pound a person is overweight puts an extra 4 pounds of pressure on the knees. So if a person is 10 pounds overweight, there is an added 40 pounds of stress placed on their lower body. And if they are 50 pounds overweight, that’s 200 pounds of added pressure! Studies have shown that overweight people report great amounts of lower back pain and joint pain compared to those of a healthy weight.

If your medical provider determines that your overall health issues are primarily due to your weight, then you must pursue a weight treatment plan to that takes your personal health into account. In short, both the diagnosis and treatment of weight issues both fall under the definition of medical.

Don’t shortchange yourself and your health by addressing your weight without the help of a medical provider. Work together to understand the underlying factors and create a strategy to get yourself into healthy balance.