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You know by now how dangerous excess weight is for your health and wellness. Extra weight has been linked to heart disease and certain types of cancer as well as symptoms that increase your overall health risk. There’s a lot of information out there on how to manage and lose weight, but not all of it is worthwhile. In fact, there are a number of problems with how people think about weight, and myths about what excess weight actually means. And these problems could have implications for your health and wellness as well as for your health assessment activities.
What is Excess Weight?
There are mountains of information available on the dangers of excess weight. Most of this information is focused on determining if you’re overweight and how to lose the weight. But this information can make it a little hard to tell what constitutes dangerous excess weight. Body Mass Index (BMI) is the most commonly accepted determiner of excess weight and yet this tool isn’t as useful as it might seem.
BMI compares your body weight to your height and determines your body fat depending on these health measurements. It’s a standard tool used to determine health risk. However, the system can be deceptive and even offer information that is completely incorrect. A bodybuilder for example will probably be well over the healthy BMI range. And yet none of their excess weight will be due to fat. But this is only one of the many problems with this system.
The Danger of ‘Normal’
If you’re concerned about your health, you might think that you’re safe as long as your weight is within the ‘normal’ BMI range. However a new study suggests this might not be true. The research found that even a small increase in weight of about 5 percent of overall weight can have serious health complications. This increase would be the equivalent of 7 and a half pounds for a 150 pound man or 6 and a half for a 130 pound woman.
This is only a small increase, one that most people wouldn’t notice. It’s even fairly normal for your weight to fluctuate throughout your life. And in all likelihood, if you’re within the normal ‘BMI’ range, this small change wouldn’t push you outside the range. But the effects on your health can be extremely serious.
The study showed that a small change like this can markedly affect your heart health. The organ becomes thicker and bigger in response to the change, with thicker walls. These thicker walls leave less room for the blood and make it more difficult for the heart to hold and pump it out. This sounds like an impossibly small change, one that can’t possibly be dangerous. But the heart is a deceptively delicate organ, and even the smallest changes can affect its efficient functioning. In this case, the thicker walls increase the chances of heart failure. This is a worst case scenario and yet all too common in today’s society.
The Good News
Although it’s frightening to know how serious small changes can be, there’s also a good side to the news. What this study emphasizes is the malleability of the heart and other systems. This means that small lifestyle changes that lead to weight loss could markedly decrease your health risk and improve the health of your heart.
But the most obvious implication of this study is the importance of performing health assessment activities on a regular basis. Getting into the habit of monitoring your weight can help you avoid a number of health problems. It will let you know when you need to make changes to avoid potential consequences. It’s never too soon to start these kinds of activities. You might think that you’re too young or too thin to worry about your health, and decide to leave these activities for later. But this would be a mistake because it’s so much harder to make changes once you’ve already developed a medical problem.
Just remember that if you’re gaining weight, even if you’re still in the normal range, it’s increasing your health risk. And monitoring your weight is an easy and straightforward way to stop that from happening.
If you’re concerned about your weight or any other health measurement, try using HomeLab. It’s the health assessment tool that keeps track of your condition and any preventative changes you make. And if you see signs of a significant problem, make sure you check with your doctor as soon as possible.
Tags: Health risk, health assessment, weight
