By Namita Gupta

Get fat free, get healthy

Are the slimmer and the more attractive lot stealing all the limelight around you? Have all the instant weight loss programmes left you feeling dehydrated and lifeless?

Bangalore, India November 17:The more you try to sweat it out, the more it accumulates.That good old fat is just a stickler and refuses to shed off at the snap of a finger. Obesity occurs over time when you eat more calories than you use. The balance between calories-in and caloriesout differs for each person. Factors that might tip the balance include your genetic makeup, overeating, eating highfat foods and not being physically active. It is an accumulation of excess body fat to an extent that may impair health. It is different from being overweight, which means weighing too much. The weight may come from muscle, bone, fat and/or body water.Both terms mean that a person's weight is greater than what's considered healthy for his or her height.

Being obese increases your risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers.A crude population measure of excess fat is the body mass index (BMI), a person's weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of his or her height (in metres). WHO defines overweight as a BMI of 25 or more and obesity as a BMI of 30 or more. There is also evidence that the risk of chronic disease increases progressively as average BMI increases above 21.

Morbid weight problems are on an increase and despite diet control and exercise regimes;
increase in weight has become a health hazard. Severe obesity damages the body by its
mechanical, metabolic and physiological adverse effects on normal body functions. These comorbidities affect nearly every organ in the body in some way and produce serious secondary illnesses, which may also be life threatening.

The risk of developing these medical problems is proportional to the degree of obesity.Obesity comes with its baggage of threats:

Years of life lost:

People who are obese do not live as long as those who are not obese. The earlier a person becomes obese, the more years of life are lost.

Dysmetabolic Syndrome X:

This syndrome involving abdominal obesity, abnormal blood fat levels, changes in insulin
sensitivity and inflammation of the arteries is associated with a markedly increased risk of heart and blood vessel disease: a precursor to the onset of diabetes in adults.

Heart Disease:

Severely obese persons are approximately 6 times as likely to develop heart disease as those who are of normal-weight.

High Blood Pressure:

Essential hypertension, the progressive elevation of blood pressure, is more common in obese persons leading to development of heart disease and damage to the blood vessels, causing susceptibility to strokes, kidney damage and hardening of the arteries.

High Blood Cholesterol:

Cholesterol levels are commonly elevated in the severely obese - another factor predisposing to development of heart and blood vessel disease.

Diabetes Mellitus:

Overweight persons are 40 times as likely to develop Type-2, Adult-Onset diabetes. Elevation of the blood sugar is the essential feature of diabetes leads to damage to tissues throughout the body. Diabetes is the leading cause of adult-onset blindness, a major cause of kidney failure and the cause of over one half of all amputations.

Sleep Apnea Syndrome:

The stoppage of breathing during sleep is commonly caused in the obese, by compression of the neck and closing the air passage to the lungs.

Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome:

It is characterised by episodes of drowsiness, or narcosis and is caused by abnormalities of breathing and accumulation of toxic levels of carbon dioxide in the blood.

Respiratory Insufficiency:

Obese persons find that exercise causes them to be out of breath very quickly, even during
ordinary activities.This condition prevents normal physical activities and exercise,often
interfering with usual daily activities.

Heartburn:

The real problem is not with digestion, but with the burning of the esophagus by the powerful stomach acid, getting to where it doesn't belong.

Asthma and Bronchitis:

Obesity is associated with a higher rate of asthma, about 3 times normal.

Gallbladder Disease:

Gallbladder disease occurs several times as frequently in the obese, leading to stones in the
gallbladder and abdominal pain and hence removal of gallbladder.
Besides, there are other health problems like Stress Urinary Incontinence, Degenerative
Disease of Lumbo-Sacral Spine, Degenerative Arthritis of Weight-Bearing Joints, Venous Stasis Disease, Embolism - a serious or even fatal event and a host of social and psychological effects.

We've all heard of fitness centers,dieticians and nutritionists doing big. Losing even 5 to 10
percent of your weight can delay or prevent some of these diseases. But sometimes things just don't work the way we want them to.There's no fret anymore as we now have help at hand and it works like magic.It's tried and tested and has no side effects whatsoever. Wockhardt Hospital on Bannergatta Road now offers exclusive obesity treatments by a team of expert consultant physicians, dieticians, endocronologists, physiotherapists, anesthetists, allied specialists and surgeons. You can walk in to meet the team,which will assess,counsel and plan suitable treatment.

The department of minimal access surgery was launched in July 2006 at Wockhardt and since then, several operations have been successfully performed. Head of services Dr MG Bhat, an experienced surgeon with extensive experience in complicated gastrointestinal surgery and laparoscopy surgery and Dr Shabeer Ahmed a trained senior doctor in advanced laparoscopy surgery from the UK with a masters degree in minimal access surgery from Scotland work their magic so you can live a healthier and longer life.The surgical facility is also assisted by Dr Raman Goel,an experienced obesity surgeon from Wockhardt, Mumbai.

You can choose from gastric banding and gastric bypass surgeries, by which you
automatically get restricted to eating,leading to a decreased absorption of food that you eat. In gastric banding, a band is placed in the upper stomach to create a small stomach pouch to decrease the capacity of stomach and its capacity to eat.In gastric bypass surgery, the capacity of the stomach is reduced using staples to create a smaller pocket of stomach and the intestine is stapled to the smaller stomach. These operations are done by laparoscopy and are keyhole surgeries, which leave only tiny scars as they are minimal access and assure quick recovery. To bring educate the public the Wockhardt team along with the launch of the obesity department will conduct a series of public forums very soon.
Call 66214120/21 for a registration.

Dr Shabir Ahmed

Dr M G Bhat