Insulin Resistance Causes and What YOU Can Do About It
From the book, "LOSING IT, America's Obsession with Weight and the Industry that Feeds on it" by Laura Fraser
"Nobody ever dies of obesity", says David Levitsky, a nutrition and obesity expert at Cornell University. Obesity, he says is often a marker for other health problems caused by a sedentary lifestyle,, but is itself not necessarily dangerous. "If you're a large person and you do not suffer from any other health problems, then there is no reason for you to lose weight."
If a person does suffer from health problems, however, then serious obesity may indeed aggravate the situation. Almost all of the studies that look at the health risks associated with obesity–researches call them "comorbidities", by which they mean high blood pressure, high cholesterol or blood sugars, diabetes or other conditions that often go along with being fat–show that those risks do increase when people are very fat, meaning about 100 pounds or so overweight. In particular, researchers have shown that having abdominal obesisty–an apple shape–can be dangerous.
Belly fat is rather active in the body, unlike fat in the hips and thighs, which sits there and causes no harm. Fat cells in the abdomen release fatty acids into the portal vein, which goes directly into the liver, where they interfere with the amount of insulin circulating in the body. This sets off a vicious cycle known as insulin resistance: with more insulin circulating, cells grow more resistant to what it does–regulate the metabolism of sugars, protein and fat–and so produce even more liver-damaging fatty acids. Eventually, this can cause problems including high bloods sugars, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, Lower HDL (good) cholesterol, and heart attacks. Regardless of BMI, many researchers say that having a waist-to-hip ratio (waist measurement divided by hip measurement) of less than .80 for women or .95 for men is likely to be healthy. So men with beer bellies are much more likely to have health problems related to their weight than women with big hips and thighs.
The bottom line isn't that obesity causes 300,000 deaths per year. It's more accurate to say that an unhealthy lifestyle contributes to those deaths and that obesity osmetimes goes along with an unhealthy lifestyle. Certainly, there are people who never exercise, eat junk food, have high stress levels, and die of heart disease, who aren't a single pound overweight. Severe obesity does seem to make other health problems worse, but that's a far cry from the blanket statement that obesity is a killer disease. Extreme apple-shaped obesity is a special case it is mostly men who have this condition) because researchers can show directly how belly fat leads to disease. But even belly fat isn't an argument for dieting; almost anyone, says Steve Blair, CAN FIGHT OFF INSULIN RESISTANCE WITH REGULAR EXERCISE.
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