Weight Loss and body mechanism

WEIGHT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE 

It would be a fallacy to say that obesity is ever the one and only cause of a death. But the association between overweight and excessive death rates is unmistakable. Among overweight men, mortality from all causes is 150 percent that for other men; among overweight women, 147 per- cent that for other women. 

As for individual diseases, insurance statistics show that overweight men and overweight women, respectively, have these excesses of mortality as compared with the general population: 142 and 175 percent for heart attacks; 159 and 162 percent for cerebral hemorrhage; 191 and 212 percent for chronic nephritis (kidney disease); 168 and 211 percent for liver and gallbladder cancer; 383 and 372 per- cent for diabetes; 249 and 147 percent for cirrhosis of the liver; 154 and ) percent for hernia and intestinal obstruction; 152 and 188 percent f or non -cancerous gallbladder diseases. Obvert is associated with many diverse types of health hazards. There are breathing difficulties, since the greater the weight in the chest.

wall, the greater the work involved in breathing. With their increased difficulty in breathing, obese people have less tolerance for exercise. They have a higher rate of respiratory infection than do people of normal weight. They may experience two complications related to their breathing problem: lethargy may develop because of accumulation of carbon dioxide in the blood from decreased ventilation; and as the result of reduced levels of oxygen in the blood, the body, trying to compensate, may produce increased amounts of red blood cells. 

The latter condition, called polycythemia, often is responsible for the ruddy complexion of obese people. It may lead to blood-clotting problems. Heart enlargement and congestive heart failure attributable to obesity have been reported. Many studies have established that more hypertension, or high blood pressure, exists among the obese than among the non-obese, that the obese hypertensive experiences a greater risk of coronary heart disease than the non-obese hypertensive, and that mortality rates for obese hypertensive persons are greater than for others with obesity alone or hypertension alone. Obese people often have impaired carbohydrate tolerance that may be sufficient in degree to be classified as diabetes.

Difficulties during anesthesia and surgery have been associated with obesity. In women with significant degrees of obesity, menstrual abnormalities and abnormal hair growth (hairsutism) have been observed with some frequency. For pregnant women, obesity can be a hazard in several ways: it is associated with a greater incidence of toxemia, of complications during delivery, and of stillbirths. Some skin problems are related to obesity. Thus, the extra surface area of the skin in the obese person may lead to excessive perspiration, and the juxtaposition of moist skin areas in adjacent folds may lead to boils, fungal infections, and other inflammatory conditions.

It has been well established that in many health problems, significant benefits often follow loss of weight. Among such conditions are hyper- tension, angina pectoris, congestive heart failure, varicose veins, rupture of intervertebral disks, osteoarthritis, and many other varieties of bone and joint disease. And certainly not to be omitted from even a partial list, many foot aches and backaches may be relieved to a significant extent, sometimes even completely, by weight loss.

FADS AND FALLACIES, Vitamins nutrition, fish and celery for body health and prevention of diseases

According to Food and Drug Administration studies involving regular market basket sampling, foods available at ordinary groceries and supermarkets contain ample quantities of vitamins. Many food additives are now in use. Times and distances involved in getting products from farm to consumer are often great, and additives are used by processors to maintain quality. In some cases, they are used to improve quality or add some advantage not found in the natural state. Thus, some foods are fortified with vitamins and minerals.

Flavoring agents may be employed to add taste appeal. Preservatives have to be used for some foods that would otherwise be spoiled by organisms or would undergo undesirable chemical changes before use. Emulsifiers may be added to bakery goods to achieve fineness of grain; and stabilizers and thickeners, such as pectin and vegetable gums, may be used for maintaining texture and body. A federal food additives law requires that additives be tested and proved safe for consumption before they may be used. Much remains to be learned about additives-and much, too, about safe use of pesticides, but on a realistic basis, with a growing population, we need both additives and pesticides and must learn to use them to best advantage.

FADS AND FALLACIES

 Perhaps no other area of human concern is as surrounded with fads and fallacies as nutrition. We have had blacks trap molasses and wheat germ offered as virtual panaceas and, more recently, vinegar and honey. Although no food has any special health virtue all its own, it would be hard to find any that at some time or other has not been touted as such. Do oysters, raw eggs, lean meat, and olives increase a man's potency?

Hardly, they have their nutrient values but confer no special potency benefits. Are fish and celery brain foods? The idea could have arisen because brain and nerve tissue are rich in phosphorus, and fish provides phosphorus-containing materials. But so do meat, poultry, milk, and eggs. And celery, it turns out, has relatively little phosphorus. 

Are white eggs healthier than brown? The fact is that the breed of hen determines eggshell color, and color has nothing to do with nutritive value. Some magical powers once attributed to foods have been explained by scientific research. For example, lemons and limes were once considered panaceas for scurvy; it is their vitamin C content, of course, which did the work. Rice polishing was indeed fine for preventing beriberi, but solely because of their vitamin B1 content. 

Goiter was once treated with sea sponge, and the seeming magic stemmed not from something unique about sponge, but from its content of iodine. Food myths arise, too, from distortions of scientific fact. Thus, carrots considered to be good for the eyes.

They are-in cases of vitamin A deficiency. The yellow pigment of carrots, carotene, is converted by low body into vitamin A, which is needed to produce a pigment for the retina of the eye. Incidentally, carotene is plentiful, too, in green vegetables where the yellow color is masked by chlorophyll. Food fads and fallacies might be amusing were it not for the danger that they can interfere with the selection of a proper diet. 

How Vitamins act and their influence in our body care?

VITAMINS

 About $1.5 billion is spent yearly for vitamins, much of it by healthy people convinced by high-powered advertising that they need extra vitamins. While essential, vitamins are required only in minute amounts, and a fully adequate supply is provided by a balanced, varied diet. To be sure, some people, relatively few, may need vitamin supplementation because they do not absorb certain vitamins properly when they are on vigorous reducing diets. In such cases, medical advice is required. 

Vitamins in excess cannot restore the vigor of youth or perform other assorted health miracles. If diet is poor, vitamin-deficiency diseases may result: scurvy, with its gum bleeding, muscle aching, general weakness caused by deficiency of vitamin C; rickets with its bone deformities from deficiency of vitamin D; pellagra with its mental deterioration from deficiency of one of the B vitamins (niacin).

Correction of a deficiency when it exists may produce near-miraculous changes. But unless there is an actual deficiency, increasing vitamin intake with supplements-adding more to what is already adequate---can be useless, needlessly expensive, and in the case of some vitamins such as A and D can be harmful, since these two vitamins can accumulate in the body to poisonous levels. Some interesting, though not definitive, reports on the possible value of large doses of vitamin C taken early during a common cold have appeared recently.

The following table lists excellent sources of principal vitamins: Vitamin E Vegetable greens: beets, kale, chard, mustard, spinach, turnips Yellow vegetables: carrots, yellow squash, sweet potatoes Beef liver Cod-liver oil, halibut-liver oil  Vitamin B (several vitamins, including niacin and thiamine, make up the B family) Liver, pork, beef, salmon Whole-wheat bread, enriched bread, oatmeal and other cereals Peanuts, peanut butter Vitamin C Citrus fruits: oranges, lemons, grapefruits, limes Tomato juice (fresh or canned) Strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants Vitamin D Halibut-liver oil and other refined fish-oil preparations Vitamin D milk Exposure of the skin to sunlight