Health Implications of Weight Loss
For a complex variety of reasons, obesity in America has rapidly risen in the past 30 years. Today, obesity affects over 58 million Americans or one out of three members of society. This upward trend has serious implications on our collective health and contributes greatly to healthcare expenses namely because obesity is linked to over 100 diseases (American Society of Bariatric Physicians Website www.asbp.org), many of them quite serious. In fact, obesity is now America’s second leading cause of preventable death (JAMA, 1996; 276:1907-1915), trailing only smoking and rapidly catching up as the incidence of obesity rises and the rate of smoking declines.
Why is the rise in the incidence of obesity associated with a rise in disease and an increase in mortality in our country? Because obesity is a major risk factor for hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular diseases, sleep apnea, multiple cancers, and more. Obesity further parallels the rising rate of knee replacements in America as obesity is strongly associated with knee osteoarthritis.
Obesity has a more subtle impact as well. Obesity is associated with depression, low self-esteem, job discrimination, infertility, low back pain and many more diseases and conditions that diminish a person’s quality of life.
In short, the epidemic of obesity has serious consequences for individual patients and our country. At Jumpstart, we believe that little justification exists for treating diseases associated with obesity but not obesity itself. In our practice, we combine a high quality of service with a weight loss regimen that is supported by scientific evidence, safe and effective long-term.