Understanding Obesity

Obesity is much more serious than simply being a few pounds overweight. If you’re carrying a large amount of excess weight on your body, there are a number of obesity-related disorders, diseases and symptoms that can be brought on or accelerated if you don’t receive effective treatment.

When you talk about weight loss surgery and obesity, you’ll often hear the term BMI. Also known as body mass index, your BMI is a measurement of your weight in relation to your height. It provides you and your doctors with key information about your general health, and can serve as an indication that you may benefit from bariatric surgery.

Per estimates released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010, over 35% of adult Americans and 17% of American children are considered to be obese. The condition is caused by an imbalance in the proportion of energy taken into the body, as compared to the amount of energy expended by the body.

When diet and exercise cease to produce sufficient weight loss results, bariatric surgery can be a life changing and even lifesaving option. Bariatric surgery (also referred to as weight loss surgery) is considered extremely safe but, as with any surgery, it does carry some degree of risk.