There are a lot of reasons that you may choose to lose weight. Some of the more obvious ones include increasing your amount of energy and reducing your risks of heart disease, especially if there is a family history involved with it. Interestingly enough, you’ll find that weight gain and arthritis are positively correlated; that is, you are more likely to get arthritic flareups if you are packing a few extra pounds.
Before you start getting a little defensive, keep in mind not every body is created equal and this is not a hard and fast rule. However, carrying thirty extra pounds greatly increases the odds of an arthritic flareup of the knees and wrists in most bodies, especially if you have a small frame. When you have extra weight, as you move around, your cartilage has to compensate for the weight that you are carrying. One way to protect your joints and keep your cartilage healthy is to take glucosamine and chondroitin daily.
This is why a lot of women who are pregnant, but have no previous history of joint problems, will suddenly find themselves with aches and pains that will lead to arthritis late in pregnancy, never to recover the way that she may want it to. As the cartilage in your heavily used joints compensates for the extra weight, it will begin to wear down, making it all the harder for your arthritis to disappear later on.
You might be a little horrified to discover that this specific issue may lead to the diagnosis the common variety of arthritis we know as osteoarthritis, which is when the degeneration of your cartilage is so severe that you are literally rubbing bone against bone. Not only does that sound painful, but there are recent studies that have led experts to believe that osteoarthritis can increase your chances of heart disease.
Being overweight for your body frame (which is different from being simply overweight when you look at your BMI) can also lead to visceral fat encasing your organs, which also leads to heart disease, so osteoarthritis caused by being overweight is a bit of a double-danger, as the visceral fat, the major concern, is likely to be what is causing the extra damage to your cartilage.
How do you check what is the point you need to worry about for your body frame? All you will need is a tape measure and a good body fat percentage calculator. If you have a scale, you can also calculate how close you are to the danger zone. It’s an easy step-by-step process, and you will be guided through where you will need to measure as you continue the process.
Obviously, women will be wanting to aim for a higher fat percentage than men, but the interesting thing about using the body fat percentage method instead of the BMI is that it will inherently measure your frame size in the form of measuring your neck and wrist and calculate exactly what lean mass you have versus your fatty mass. One of the best ways to fight weight gain is to add raspberries to your diet. Raspberry ketones helps the body to loss weight naturally.
This is far more accurate than the BMI when it comes to checking for your risks, but it comes with a small risk: Your overweight, but nothing to worry about margin is severely shortened. For women, you need to worry if your body fat percentage is at 30% or above, and men need to start worrying at 25%. As you get older, you will need a little more fat to function, but that doesn’t mean you can take a break; osteoarthritis is also more likely to appear as you get older.
While obesity is not a death sentence, it can certainly make things a lot more complicated, and increase your risks for other discomforts that might be linked to something more sinister. Your best bet is to keep an eye on your body, know yourself, and work with yourself instead of against yourself.
If you can manage to find a happy balance, you won’t be finding many problems caused by your weight gain, and that includes your risks of arthritis and everything that comes with it. Something to keep in mind, however, is the best known way to treat arthritis and keep a flareup away is to keep active, and if you keep active, your risks of visceral fat and osteoarthritis due to weight gain go down dramatically.
