The Health Effects of Obesity in Adults

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Jennifer Nasser, RD, PhD, assistant professor in the department of biology at Drexel University in Philadelphia says “In short, obesity can affect functioning of all major body organ systems.” The definition of obesity is having an excess amount of body fat. This extra body fat can lead to having many health conditions that can even cause death. More than one third of the United States population is obese or overweight showing that obesity is a national epidemic. It claims the lives of over 850 lives a day and over 300,000 lives each year. Obesity is and can be the cause of multiple health risks and health effects in adults.
One of the great risk factors of being obese is the effect it can have on reproduction in both women and men. Obesity can influence different aspects of reproduction in women such as sexual activity, conception, and ovulation. Also, new research shows that obesity is a contributor to infertility in women. Women who were obese were 43 percent less likely to get pregnant than normal-weight or just slightly overweight women. Jan Willem Van Der Steeg, MD, of Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Center says “We found that obesity is an additional risk factor for infertility in women who have regular menstrual cycles.” Steeg suggests that leptin, the hormone that regulates appetite and energy expenditure, may prevent successful fertilization. The Nurses’ Health Study suggests that 25 percent of ovulatory infertility in the U.S. may be caused by obesity. Obesity increases the risk of early and late miscarriage and complications during labor and delivery. In men, obesity can affect sperm count and sperm mobility. It can also affect sexual function. Studies, including the Massachusetts’s Male Aging Study, show that the odds o...

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