Health Issues with Being Overweight: What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You

Being overweight is much more than the way you appear or how your clothes fit. The health issues with being overweight are severe, irreversible and in most circumstances life threatening, but are also very curable. You are not alone, and you are not out of options, especially in case you have attempted diets and exercise programs without success.

Our board-certified surgeons at BodEvolve Bariatric have conducted more than 14,000 operations in Dallas, Richardson, Arlington and Texarkana and have not only helped patients to lose their weight but to reverse the diseases that came with them. The first step towards reclaiming your health is to know what excess weight is doing to your body.

Health Issues with Being Overweight That Go Beyond the Scale

Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is one of the most documented health problems that are associated with being overweight. The extra body fat (especially visceral fat that accumulates around the stomach) disrupts insulin signaling, which causes the pancreas to wear out more and more until it collapses.

The amazing thing about bariatric surgery is that it does not simply assist in managing diabetes but it can actually place it in remission. A 85 percent rate of diabetes resolution following surgery is witnessed in our patients who usually decrease or stop insulin and oral medications in a few weeks following surgery. Surgery such as the Gastric Bypass and the Duodenal Switch is especially effective in those patients whose main issue is blood sugar and in whom this is the primary goal of surgery.

High Blood Pressure and Heart Disease

When the heart is giving blood to a greater mass of the body it must work much harder. In the long run, this stress increases the blood pressure, stiffens the arterial walls, and exposes the heart to the risk of heart attack and stroke. Cardiovascular risk is compounded by high cholesterol, that often goes hand in hand with obesity, and makes the plaque accumulation in the arteries accelerate.

Even 10-15% body weight weight loss sustained can significantly decrease blood pressure. Most patients who had bariatric surgeries at BodEvolve claim to reduce or drop antihypertensive drugs after the first year of surgery – a feat that no large-scale dieting has been able to achieve.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Excess weight and sleep apnea are directly related to each other: fat deposits around the neck and throat impede the airway, leading to the intermittent disruption of breathing during the night. Regardless of the number of hours slept, patients usually wake up with a feeling of exhaustion and untreated sleep apnea is a major factor leading to heart failure and stroke.

There is a 90% reduction in sleep apnea in BodEvolve patients who have undergone weight loss surgery. Many are able to discontinue CPAP therapy entirely. When you wake up feeling tired every morning, it is not bad sleep that is causing you to be fatigued, it is the weight.

Arthritis: Joint Pain and Osteoarthritis

Each extra pound of body weight exerts about four pounds of extra strain on knee joints. To a person who has 50 extra pounds, it amounts to 200 pounds of added strain with each step. This hastens the degradation of cartilages, and results in osteoarthritis that can cause daily activities such as walking, climbing stairs, playing with your children to be truly painful.

Weight loss surgery does not repair the damage that has already occurred in the joint, it only dramatically slows the process and minimizes pain. Most patients claim that they can discontinue pain medications and resume engaging in activities that they had given up years ago.

Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)

Any surplus calories that do not get utilized as energy are stored as fat – even within the liver. The non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a disease that has a considerable number of obese individuals being at risk and failure to treat it may lead to cirrhosis and liver failure. It is mostly silent till damage has been progressed and it is among the most hazardous and least diagnosed health conditions being overweight.

The liver fat has been proved to be reduced significantly by weight loss surgery and in most patients NAFLD has been resolved due to the dramatic decreased excess weight.

Depression, anxiety, and mental health

It is a two-way relationship between mental health and obesity. Depression and anxiety are a result of chronic pain, fatigue, social stigma, and diminished mobility. Meanwhile, emotional eating and psychological stress can form a cycle of weight gain, which is very hard to overcome using pure will power.

BodEvolve is a holistic care center that involves psychological support in your weight loss program. Our program is aimed at not only dealing with the physical, but also with the emotional aspect of obesity – since, to achieve a long-term change, both are needed.

When Should Bariatric Surgery be an option?

If any of the health issues with being overweight mentioned above ring true, then bariatric surgery might not be far off from being your solution. You could be a candidate for weight loss surgery in case you are living with one or more of the health conditions listed above and your BMI is 35 (or 30 with serious comorbidities). Our team provides all the variants of the procedures – Gastric Sleeve and SADI-S  – depending on your health profile, weight loss, and lifestyle.

Not sure surgery is right for you yet? Non-surgical weight loss arlington provides a non-surgical route that has medicine support and lifestyle coaching. Our surgeons will discuss each choice with you without coercion or judgment.

Get to know our surgeons, view actual patients’ bariatric surgery before and after and find out how the process works- then make the step that can turn everything around.

Our four convenient locations in the DFW serve patients in Dallas, Richardson, Arlington, and Texarkana.