Heart disease, diabetes, and arthritis all have one factor in common: They’re all chronic health conditions. While a doctor may prescribe a medication to help you keep your condition under control, you can take certain proactive steps to help combat the issue as well. One of those steps is to lose weight if you are overweight.
Being overweight can exacerbate many types of chronic illnesses. That’s why weight control is key to maintaining good health and preventing health problems from developing in the first place – and preventing your current chronic health issue from becoming worse.
Being Overweight and the Onset of Chronic Illness
If you’re overweight or obese, your risk of developing various chronic health conditions increases.
In terms of your cardiovascular health, you’re more likely to develop hypertension (high blood pressure). As a result, you could suffer from heart failure, heart attack, or stroke. Being overweight exacerbates high blood pressure because you have a higher blood volume, so your heart has to work harder to pump blood throughout your body. This is the same reason why being overweight puts you more at risk for heart disease and other heart-related problems.
Your risk of arthritis is also more substantial when you’re overweight because of the excess pressure that you’re placing on your joints. Having larger fat cells takes more room in your body, thereby causing more pressure on everything to work harder to maintain your body. When you lose weight, the fat cells become smaller and more manageable for your body to maintain normally.
How Obesity Continues Chronic Health Conditions
Obesity will continue to take a toll on your heart if you are overweight; if you lose weight, the pressure is greatly lessened. Your heart is a muscle, so staying lean helps to keep your heart working normally.
Insofar as arthritis, the added pressure from being overweight puts extra stress on the joints in your back, hips, knees, ankles, and feet. This will increase the pain you experience from arthritis.
Plus, if you continue to partake in the poor habits that led to your obesity in the first place, your blood sugar levels could become out of control. Type 2 diabetes is usually preventable by following healthy weight control measures in your lifestyle.
Medical Group Practice in Northern New Jersey
If you are a physician who practices chronic disease management or any other field of medicine here in the northern New Jersey area, join us at Hudson MD Group. We are a multi-specialty medical practice that provides everything you need so that you can focus much less on administrative tasks and much more on your patients.
Your practice can be yet another satellite office of our larger regional practice, enabling us to expand our patient reach even further. We refer patients to each other across the medical group, which is a win-win for everyone – patients and physicians alike.
If you would like to find out more about joining our medical group of physicians in the area, contact us today by calling us at (973) 705-4914 or by filling out our online contact form now. We look forward to showing you how our practice can not only make your life easier and more productive as a doctor, but also provide a seamless experience for your patients.
