Are You A "Normal Weight Obese" Person?
You may appear to be a normal weight, even thin. But your insides may be composed of way too much fat and not enough muscle.
We spoke to Dr. Eric Braverman, a neurologist by training and now the director of the Place for Achieving Total Health (PATH Medical) on Manhattan's East Side.
" Basically what "normal weight obesity" means," said Dr. Braverman, "is that many people of normal weight are so out of shape that they have the amount of fat that an obese person has when they're overweight. So an overweight person can have a lot of muscle and a lot of fat or they can have a thin person whose thin but has so much fat that they're actually "normal weight obese".
" Actually more of America is currently "normal weight obese" than is just overweight or obese.
" Preliminary data suggests that 60% of America is obese with a great majority having normal BMI and reasonably normal weight. We're just out of shape. There are a lot of reasons: from toxic air affecting our metabolism, to hormones to electromagnetic fields to poor health to incredibly bad diets, to the wrong beverages. We have now an obese epidemic which is basically a disease of the brain, and the brain's metabolism.
" The ways we fix it is we improve the brain's metabolism, which can be anything from teas, spices, whole grains and various nutrients, amino acids, herbs and in cases hormones, and in some ways, flush of toxic metals that are in the air, in new york and other major cities.
Also make sure to get an accurate measure of your bone density and your body mass index.
" When you do a bone density most good quality machines have simultaneous fat measurement
at each part of your body, so a person may be 40% body fat in their arms and only 25% around their waist and then 30% in their legs so they're morbidly obese arms with normal weight around their belly and their legs are actually just obese." Each body part has it's own separate measurement.
" So you have really a fantastic tool for specific obesity management; specific training of the person. You identify obesity earlier, and this is now very important that we start treating the "normal weight obese" because the "normal weight obese" will almost always progress to the severely obese.
" Each type of person has different obesity so one individual has these massive tricep flabs and another has the pear fat around the hips and thighs and then male obesity can frequently be abdominal which means heart disease and the pear type obesity may mean more lack of fitness and cancer risk, so there are important issues in seeing where your obesity is."
Can't someone just use the rough measure of body mass index, the formula we've been told about?
Braverman says no. " BMI is what we call the baloney mass index," said Braverman. " The body mass index means the majority of americans that pass it are still unfortunately obese or overweight. It's imprecise and will be replaced, as every aspect of medicine will be replaced by computerized technology. Technology is the way to examine fat, simple as that.
" Technology examines fat more accurately, the technology of the dexa scan is very advanced and this study supports the fact that normal weight obesity is an epidemic and it's serious because each level of obesity produces more heart disease and probably more memory deficits and more depression. That's because we're a culture obsessed with thinness without fitness. This is particularly more a female problem. There's probably a higher prevalence of normal weight obesity in women, who particularly have hormonal imbalances starting between 25 and 30 and going into full perimenopause by 40. There's a huge loss of tone in women even when they preserve weight. Our society's answer to this has been plastic surgery of the face and moisturizers. Plastic surgery and moisturizers are not going to repair this process.
So knowing and controlling your cholesterol numbers are not really the answer? We're not focusing on the right thing?
" We're not," said Braverman. "You know, when a house gets hit by a hurricanes, you don't focus on door knobs.
" America's health house has been hit by a hurricane and we're talking about cholesterol when we have an epidemic of obesity that's causing more depression, more cognitive or memory loss as well as heart disease. The real source of obesity remains the brain's metabolism and our culture right now has to be diagnosed as toxic to our heads.
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