Illnesses & Diseases Associated with being Overweight

---

Having a few love-handles might seem natural, especially considering you are not alone these days. If you look at the general population, most men have a bit of extra around their middle, so what's the problem? 

Well, the problem is that although we have a better medical ability to fix each other than ever before, we as a developed world are now having more heart attacks than ever before too. Did you know that someone is admitted into a UK hospital with a heart attack every 5 minutes? Are you going to be the next guy being dragged to hospital to become another statistic? 

Type 2 diabetes has also reached epidemic proportions, to the extent that it is one of the leading diseases in our society, and yet it was hardly heard of 50 years ago. 

The problem too is that those "few extra love-handles" these days have evolved into way more than just a few extra love handles; it's just that the norm has changed, so an obese guy is now just a podgy guy. Many people are seriously overweight. If you weigh 100 kilograms (220 pounds, or 15.7 stone), then about 25 kg of that (55 pounds, or 4 stone) is pure fat. That means that 25% of the weight you carry around every day is fat... and that's not really an obese guy, just a "big-boned" chap with a good layer of insulation. I'm sure you have some idea of how much you weigh. Even a very tall, muscular man who is lean would struggle to weigh more than 80 kilograms, as a comparison. 

Here are a few of the main illnesses & diseases that are associated with being overweight. I will address depression & anxiety separately because I feel they need some extra attention. 

This is very common these days, and not only for obese people. Did you know that many top performing athletes have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes recently? The medical fraternity seem to blame their disease on heredity, saying that they were predisposed to this debilitating disease, but there is other evidence to support that the issue lies in how much high energy, low fat products these people have eaten over several years (or even decades). This has led to their bodies becoming intolerant to sugar in the same way that obese people's bodies have. There is a way to reverse Type II diabetes: stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple. Reduce the cause of insulin spikes, and in doing so your body will slowly repair itself. This reversal of Type 2 Diabetes has happened to thousands of people worldwide, who have been put onto medication by their doctors, but have managed to wean themselves off (under medical guidance) over a surprisingly short time frame. 

High blood pressure is a precursor for a bunch of nasty, and potentially lethal, diseases. High blood pressure in overweight people can often be caused by fat building up in your arteries & veins, so the actual diameter of your arteries becomes constricted. This in turn means that your heart needs to pump harder to push your blood through your body, hence it ends up generating more blood pressure. Over months & years, this will tire your heart out. 

Having high blood pressure can be rectified by losing body fat and getting healthier. In the process of losing fat around your waistline, you will also importantly lose fat inside your arteries and between your vital organs (known as visceral fat). This must be a slow process though: we don't want you having a heart attack in the process!

This isn't a life or death situation, but it could help save your marriage. High blood pressure can be directly linked with not being able to maintain an erection. This is because your high blood pressure needs that extra blood that you have just sent into your todger to get a hard-on, so your body steals the blood back out. The result? You are back to another disappointing situation, and your partner is left wondering why he or she isn't attractive enough for you to keep it up anymore. 

If you can reduce your body fat naturally, then your blood pressure should also naturally be reduced, and your erection can stay up for the duration. Note also the topic of hormones further down this page on another reason you might be struggling to get a boner. 

Most people understand that a heart attack isn't what you want happening anytime soon! But if you are overweight, then you probably have high blood pressure, and this means your heart is working too hard, every minute of the day. Add some physical exercise into the equation and you are really asking for trouble. 

Getting fit is the best way to minimize your chances of dying from a heart attack, apart from swallowing a whole bunch of pills every day for the rest of your life, and avoiding any physical activity (including sex by the way). This needs to be done slowly (getting fit, not your sex) so that you can get your heart & arteries to become healthier without over-taxing them in the process. Let's work on increasing your fitness, reducing your weight, and adding decades of quality life, and lots of happy shagging, to your ticket. 

This is caused from a product called Uric acid that is quite insoluble (that means it's not soluble) that is produced when sugars are metabolized inside your body. The uric acid builds up in your joints as crystalline bits that cause lots of pain in your joints; often in your feet. It was referred to as the rich man's disease in the past, because it only afflicted people who could afford sugary and rich foods. 

Removal of sugar from your diet, which is a natural part of the ketogenic diet, can resolve this terrible affliction... but ! if you go back to eating sugary, rich foods, it will likely come back. Incidentally excess salt can have similar consequences, and it has been shown that excessive salt intake can cause the same uric acid to build up in your extreme joints (feet and hands).  

You might be thinking you have arthritis, so I'm sure you'll be relieved if you can remove this terrible pain just by changing the foods that you eat! 

This can be really painful, and might be related to the gout comments above. Many people find that all of their joints ache. For me it can be my knees. This makes getting out of bed difficult enough, let alone climbing the stairs, or worse; traversing back down the stairs! 

There are foods that seem to be the primary cause of sore, inflamed joints. These definitely include sugary foods, but can also include vegetable oils and many processed foods. Removal of vegetable oil from your diet is easy; throw it in the bin & use olive oil instead. Switching to a ketogenic diet will help reduce lots of these aches & pains within a couple of weeks. 

I notice when I have eaten sugary foods, my knees especially complain like mad. It takes only a few days of healthy eating for the pain to disappear. 

Who would have thought that little old, sweet sugar could be screwing up your sex life? It has been shown that fructose (a type of sugar) hijacks your mitochondria, and in turn your body's hormone production goes down the toilet. 

Mitochondria are tiny organelles that live in every cell in your body, and in fact every cell in every creature & plant in the world, except cancer cells from what I recall. Mitochondria help our cells convert our food into energy, but they have now been shown to also be directly responsible for producing our hormones. Every hormone in your body, from the one that wakes you in the morning to the one that makes you want to sleep at night, and importantly the ones that make you horny. 

Remove sugar and carbohydrates from your diet using our ketogenic diet, and eat more protein & dietary fats, and you will be surprised with how quickly your hormone levels restore themselves. The result? You might not be quite like a teenager again, but you'll feel better than you have for a long while.  

Incidentally this is equally applicable to women as men when it comes to sex-drive hormones! Go Ketogenic together and reap the benefits. You can thank me later with a 5 star review.