My Healthy Habits

The obesity rate in the United States is rising rapidly and something that has a lot of physicians quite concerned. The medical community predicts some states will have a rate of 50% of their residents being technically obese by the year 2011. This was never an issue 4 decades ago and many of our society lifestyle changes are to blame for this highly rising obesity rate going up. Obesity creates a lot of issues such as heart attacks, diabetes, hip and Rockford knee pain, hypertension and high cholesterol. The lack of exercise and increase in being sedentary is also creating new health problems such as Rockford carpal tunnel syndrome from sitting at a computer all day, high BMI factor with more fat percentage than muscle on a person, and poor posture from being hunched over the computer or lounging around on the couch all day.

The rate of obesity in the United States back in the 1960’s was at 13% and by the year 2000, it was at a whopping 31% with educated guesses of it reaching to 50% of the population in certain areas in the next couple of years. Being overweight, obese or morbidly obese which is over 100 pounds above your healthy weight is causing a large number of health issues in Americans. One of the biggest problems has to do with the heart and diabetes. Being so overweight can cause a lot of strain on your heart and if you are consuming high fat foods everyday this will clog all of your arteries leading to your heart making you a high risk for a heart attack or heart disease.

Diabetes is also a problem due to the rise in obesity in this nation. In the past it was unusual to see a child with diabetes related to weight gain as it was mainly a health problem that plagued overweight adults. Now, children are being diagnosed with this adult onset kind of diabetes because they are so overweight. Some of the symptoms of diabetes are the frequent need to urinate, dry skin, blurry eyesight, numbness and tingling in the legs and arms and extreme fatigue. If left untreated, you could die from diabetes.

With so many people spending hours and hours at their computers for work or for fun, there are new issues that are increasing from that and being sedentary. A large rise in carpal tunnel syndrome has occurred from typing on a computer keyboard all day long causing overuse pain on this part of the hands. This was not a problem back in the 60’s and 70’s and now is a very common problem. Also being fat and sedentary has caused a many people to have pain in their joints, especially their knees and hips. That extra weight is putting a lot of pressure on the joints and the lack of exercise leaves no muscle strength to support these joints to be strong.

The need to {stop|reverse] this obesity epidemic is urgent with more and more Americans suffering serious health problems from their unhealthy lifestyles.