What are the dangers from obesity?
Obesity
Dangers
Q. What are the dangers from obesity?
A. Plump people are only
one-fourth as likely to suffer from tuberculosis as a person of average weight,
while lean people are six times as likely to suffer from this disease as those who are overweight. Dr.
Symmonds has clearly shown that leanness
predisposes to tuberculosis or at least to fatal
tuberculosis, while lean
persons are only half as likely to suffer
from diabetes as persons of average weight.
Lean persons, on the other hand, are twice as likely to die from pneumonia as persons who are overweight. Fleshy persons seem to be in some way immune
against the germ of pneumonia, while lean persons are especially
susceptible. Overweights suffer twice
as often from Bright's disease, both acute and chronic, as do persons
of normal weight. This is probably
due to the excessive feeding to which
overweights are likely to be habituated. Obese persons suffer from cirrhosis
of the liver three and one half times as often as persons of normal weight.
Doctor Rogers, the chief medical director of a great
New York life insurance company has shown by extended and careful study of the
data furnished by the experience of this great insurance company, that persons
who are even ten per cent above the normal weight have a considerably higher
mortality than those who are ten per cent below the normal weight. It appears then, that it is much
safer to be thin than over fat. An abundance of flesh is generally looked upon
as an evidence of health and vigor, but this popular notion is evidently an error.
Over fatness is a diseased condition. An accumulation of flesh becomes a
handicap to the body even when the amount is comparatively small. A large
accumulation of fat is highly burdensome because it imposes upon the body the
task of carrying around a dead weight. If, for ex ample, a person's weight is
double what it should be such an individual is like a man who is carrying
constantly upon his shoulders an other man whose weight is equal to his own;
wherever he goes he must carry his burden with him. He cannot lay it down even
for a moment. When sitting still little inconvenience may be experienced,
but as soon as active exercise begins the handicap makes itself felt. When the
fat man attempts to run or is required to climb a
hill or flight of stairs he is quickly out of breath, partly for the reason
that he is required to do perhaps double the amount of work which a person of normal
weight would do under the same circumstances;
in other words, with one man's muscles he is carrying the weight of two men.
There is another reason why the over fat man
is short of breath. The
fat accumulation is not upon the surface alone, it is within
the body as well. In some cases the chief part of the accumulation is within
the cavities of the body. The heart
and lungs are enclosed within a bony cage. In the fat man the accumulation of fat in the chest
lessens the room for the heart and lungs.
The natural result is shortness of breath such
as would occur if one had lost the use of
one lung or part of a lung from pneumonia,
pleurisy or other cause, or if the action of
the lungs were restricted
by tight lacing. An accumulation of fat about the heart acts as a burden and lessens its efficiency. An accumulation of fat in the abdomen is also a
source of shortness of breath by interfering with
the descent of the diaphragm in inhalation. An excessive accumulation of fat
in the abdomen may be readily detected by
a very simple means. The patient puts himself in a
horizontal position with the clothing of the trunk loosened so that the abdominal fat may be grasped between the hands. If now
the head or legs are raised so as to strongly contract the abdominal
muscles it may be observed that the fat grasped between
the hands disappears. when this occurs
it is because the fat is inside of the abdomen. If the skin is pinched up while the legs are raised and
muscles tense it will be found to be not much thicker than normal. In other
words there is no large accumulation of fat
beneath the skin. If the deposit of fat is
on the outside, however, the mass gathered
between the hands will not disappear when the legs are raised since the fat accumulation is outside of the abdominal muscles
instead of beneath them.
In very chronic cases of obesity fatty degeneration
occurs. The fat has not only accumulated upon and between the various organs
of the body, but
the organs themselves be come changed to fat, that is, the heart muscle is not only overloaded
with fat, but the muscle it self undergoes a
fatty change so that the heart becomes
weaker and weaker and
finally becomes unable to do its work.
Fatty degeneration of other muscle structures and
of the liver and other glands is also common in
these cases. Over-fatness should
always be regarded as a serious disease, and
persons who find themselves inclined to take
on fat should combat it early instead of
waiting until they become monstrous masses of adipose
tissue, since it is much easier to prevent the development of this disease
than to cure it; in fact when a person has been long the subject of excessive
fat accumulation certain changes occur in the body which are more or less
irremediable. It is far better to avoid becoming over-fat than to rely upon
taking an obesity cure for it when one has accumulated an unusable surplus.