Causes Of Excess Body Fat
Causes
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The human body was designed for life forty thousand years ago, when the ability to store energy in times of plenty meant the difference between life and death during famine. This protective mechanism is a source of trouble when food, in unlimited quantities, is readily available. This is evident in the increasing prevalence of excessive weight in humans in modern times, particularly in Western cultures. While excess weight is just an exaggeration of a normal body, the storage of energy for future is properly classified as a health problem. This is because excessive amounts of storage fat may interfere with the normal physiology of the body. Excess storage fat is directly related to the increasing prevalence of Type II diabetes. It contributes to fatigue, high blood pressure, menstrual disorders, infertility, digestive complaints, low levels of physical fitness and to the development of some cancers. The social costs of excess fat that include decreased productivity, discrimination, depression, and low self-esteem, are less easily described and measured. Worldwide, it has reached epidemic proportions in the last thirty years, affecting both sexes and all ethnic, age, and socioeconomic groups. More than 50% of adults in the United States, for example, currently fall into over weight classifications, and 22% of preschool children are classified as overweight. The increasing prevalence of excess weight heralds spiraling health care costs in the near future for those who have the problem.
Because excess storage fat reflects an imbalance between the amount of energy taken into the body in the form of food and the amount of energy expended in metabolism and physical activity, and because eating is an activity that involves choice and volition, it is classified by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) as a "behavior" rather than as a disease. In recent years, researchers have attempted to establish a biologic basis for the development of excess storage fat. They have succeeded in identifying many markers of the biochemical mechanisms that appear to be involved in feedback loops that control energy balance. However, much of the information is extrapolated from experimental work in rodents. Leptin, a hormone produced in fat cells is an example of such a marker. Leptin raised a great deal of hope as a potential treatment of excess storage fat, but, as with many other laboratory discoveries, the hormone has proved far more complex and less easily understood in humans.
To get rid of fat, you need a fat loss program or fat loss diet that burns the fat and at the same time reduces fat intake. |
